Cytokinin-regulated targets of Cytokinin Response Factor 6 are involved in potassium transport

Cytokinin (CK) is a plant hormone crucial to plant development and growth. Cytokinin Response Factor 6 (CRF6) is a CK-induced transcription factor that is part of the CK signaling cascade. While the role of CRF6 has been examined in oxidative stress response, there has been surprisingly little investigation of CRF6 in the context of CK signaling, including identifying CK-regulated targets of CRF6. Here, we conduct a transcriptomic study of Arabidopsis examining the CRF6 mutant (crf6) in the presence and absence of CK, revealing 163 downstream CRF6-dependent CK-regulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs). 15.3% of these DEGS were found as overlapping with larger number of standardly identified CK-regulated DEGs, suggesting that CRF6 is involved in regulating a subset of downstream CK responses through these gene targets. The general transcriptional regulation of CRF6-dependent CK-regulated DEGs indicates that CRF6 may function as a negative regulator of CK response. We investigated one subset of CRF6 CK-dependent targets (SKOR, HAK5, and NRT1. 5) involved in an underexamined functional role of CK response: the uptake and transportation of potassium. To determine how CK and CRF6 are involved in potassium acquisition and distribution, ionomic and physiological experiments were conducted on plants grown in media with sufficient and deficient potassium concentrations and in the presence and absence of CK. In order to investigate how CK alone affects potassium transport, similar experiments were performed on skor, hak5, and nrt1.5 mutant lines of these CRF6-dependent CK-regulated targets. These findings indicate novel connections between CK and potassium transport, which appear to be regulated in a CRF6-dependent manner.