The team of Aiwu Dong, Jianhua Gan, and Jianxun Huang collaborated to reveal the molecular mechanism by which different MYB and bHLH transcription factors in plants select partners to form complexes

Aiwu Dong, Jianhua Gan, and Jianxun Huang teamed up to reveal different MYB and bHLH transcription factors in plants

Molecular mechanisms by which select partners form complexes

On August 22, 2022, aiwu Dong, Jianhua Gan and Jianxun Huang of the School of Life Sciences of Fudan University collaborated to publish a research paper

The MYB and bHLH transcription factor families are very large, with more than 300 MYB family transcription factors and more than 100 bHLH family transcription factors present in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana

In order to analyze the molecular mechanisms of interaction and companion selection of different MYB-bHLH complexes, Aiwu Dong's team analyzed the crystal structures of three MYB-bHLH complexes, WER-EGL3, CPC-EGL3 and MYB29-MYC3, revealing two MYB-bHLH interaction patterns

Wang Baihui, a master's student from Dong Aiwu's team, and Luo Qiang and Li Yingping, phD students, are the co-first authors of the paper, and Professor Dong Aiwu, Researcher Gan Jianhua and Associate Researcher Huang Jianxun are co-corresponding authors, and the research work is funded

Two binding modes and independent evolution of MYB and bHLH transcription factors