BARD1 may be renamed ROW1 because it functions mainly as a REPRESSOR OF WUSCHEL1

Human BRCA1 (BRreast CAncer susceptible gene1) is known to involve in cell cycle control, transcriptional regulation, DNA recombination, DNA repair and many other processes. hBARD1 (BRCA1-Associated Ring Domain 1) forms heterodimer via its N-terminal conserved RING domain with BRCA1. In Arabidopsis, two genes, At4g21070 and At1g04020, that share N-terminal RING domain and C-terminal BRCT (for BRCA1 C-Terminal) domains with no substantial similarities for other motifs, have been identified. AtBRCA1 was induced by gamma-ray while AtBARD1 was required for DNA repair. Recently, we find that AtBARD1 may function to confine WUS transcription in the shoot apical meristem organization center, together with the ATPase-dependent chromatin remodeling factor, SYD. In bard1-3 Arabidopsis knockout mutant, WUS was released to the outer layers and expressed at extremely high level comparing to wild-type. Our data suggest that BARD1 mainly function as a REPRESSOR OF WUSCHEL1 (ROW1). Extensive motif analyses carried out here showed that ROW1 possesses substantial sequence identity with a reported transcription repressor, MLL and also a potential PHD domain which recognizes histone tail codes, in its uncharacterized middle region. We suggest that ROW1 represses transcription in a chromatin-related mechanism.