The long term goals of many molecular biologists are to understand the mechanisms by which gene expression is controlled, and how these mechanisms are integrated with developmental and environmental signals that coordinate growth and development. More specifically, I my lab has been interested in how transcription factors interact with themselves, DNA, and with other factors, to determine the functional status of a given gene set. Numerous relevant questions can be posed in these regards, which only begin to address these long term goals, for example; How do transcription factors specifically recognize and bind DNA? What determines the specificity of dimer formation between different factors? How do interactions with other ancillary proteins modify their activities? How do these interactions contribute to specific gene activation? How does chromatin structure interact with these factors?

Starting with my postdoctoral research projects, I began to study plant transcription factors. In 1993 I was funded to investigate in detail one of these factors, EmBP-1. A large effort was made to understand how this protein functions and its role in plant development. The answers to these questions are still being pursued in other laboratories although I have shifted my efforts to more applied projects.

Publications:

Guiltinan, M. J., W. R. Marcotte, and R. S. Quatrano. 1990. A plant leucine zipper protein that recognizes an abscisic acid response element. Science 250:267-270.

Guiltinan, M. J. and L. Miller. 1994. Molecular characterization of the DNA Binding and dimerization domains of the bZIP transcription factor, EmBP-1. Plant Molecular Biology 26:1041-1053.

Niu, X. and M. J. Guiltinan. 1994. DNA binding specificity of the wheat Bzip protein EmBP-1. Nucleic Acids Research 22:4969-4978.

Guiltinan, M. J. and X. Niu. 1996. cDNA Encoding a Wheat (Triticum aestivum, cv Chinese spring) glycine-rich nucleic acid-binding protein. Plant Molecular Biology 30:1301-1306.

Niu, X., C. C. Adams, J. L. Workman, and M. J. Guiltinan. 1996. Binding of the wheat basic leucine zipper protein EmBP-1 to nucleosomal binding sites is modulated by nucleosomal positioning. The Plant Cell 8:1569-1587.

Eckardt, N. A., L. McHenry and M. J. Guiltinan. 1998. Overexpression of ∆-EmBP, a truncated dominant negative version of the wheat G-box binding protein EmBP-1, alters vegetative development in transgenic tobacco. Plant Molecular Biology 38:539-549.

Kim, K.-N., M. Gao, D. K. Fisher, and M. J. Guiltinan. 1998. Genomic organization and promoter activity of the maize starch branching enzyme 1 gene. Gene 216:233-243.

Niu, X., L. Renshaw-Gegg, L. Miller, and M. J. Guiltinan. 1999. Bipartite determinants of DNA binding specificity of plant basic leucine zipper proteins. Plant Molecular Biology 41:1-13.

Carlini, L. E., M. Ketudat, R. L. Parsons, S. Prabhakar, R. J. Schmidt, and M. J. Guiltinan. 1999. The maize EmBP-1 orthologue differentially regulates Opaque2-dependent gene expression in yeast and cultured maize endosperm cells. Plant Molecular Biology 41:339-349.