<p>This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p> <p>Transcription factors (TFs) are regulatory proteins that have played a pivotal role in the
evolution of eukaryotes and that also have great biotechnological potential. REGIA
(REgulatory Gene Initiative in Arabidopsis) is an EU-funded project involving 29
European laboratories with the objective of determining the function of virtually all
transcription factors from the model plant, <italic>Arabidopsis thaliana</italic>. REGIA involves: 1. the
definition of <italic>TF</italic> gene expression patterns in <italic>Arabidopsis</italic>; 2. the identification of mutations
at <italic>TF</italic> loci; 3. the ectopic expression of TFs (or derivatives) in <italic>Arabidopsis</italic> and in crop
plants; 4. phenotypic analysis of the mutants and mis-expression lines, including both RNA
and metabolic profiling; 5. the systematic analysis of interactions between TFs; and 6. the
generation of a bioinformatics infrastructure to access and integrate all this information.
We expect that this programme will establish the full biotechnological potential of plant
TFs, and provide insights into hierarchies, redundancies, and interdependencies, and their
evolution. The project involves the preparation of both a <italic>TF</italic> gene array for expression
analysis and a normalised full length open reading frame (ORF) library of TFs in a yeast
two hybrid vector; the applications of these resources should extend beyond the scope of
this programme.</p>
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Comp Funct Genomics. 2002 Apr; 3(2):102-108