Arabidopsis TBP-ASSOCIATED FACTOR 12 ortholog NOBIRO6 controls root elongation with unfolded protein response cofactor activity

Significance Living organisms continuously rebalance their growth and defense/tolerance machineries upon environmental perturbation and energy limitation, which appear as trade-offs. The unfolded protein response (UPR) is a supposed underlying machinery for those trade-offs, responding to a broad spectrum of stress categories and modulating the fundamental growth in both animal and plant systems. We here report the incorporation of general transcription factor NOBIRO6/TAF12b into the UPR-mediated plant root growth control. This indicates that the gene regulation by UPR itself is a key to elucidate the growth trade-offs. Given previously reported roles of NOBIRO6/TAF12b in the signaling of two phytohormones, cytokinin and ethylene, our report proposes how multichannel signals interactively shape plants to survive and thrive in the wild.