Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 2 March 2021 doi:10.20944/preprints202103.0066.v1 1 Multifarious Roles of GRAS Transcription Factors in Plants 2 Priya Kumari1,2,a, Mrinalini Kakkar3a, Vijay Gahlaut1,3*, Vandana Jaiswal1,2* Sanjay Kumar1,2 3 4 1CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, 176061, India 5 2Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad-201002, India 6 3Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi, 110021, India 7 8 aEqual contribution 9 *Corresponding authors 10 Email id:
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[email protected] 11 12 13 Abstract 14 15 The GAI‐RGA ‐ and ‐SCR (GRAS) proteins belong to the plant-specific transcription factor gene 16 family and involved in several developmental processes, phytohormone and phytochrome 17 signaling, symbiosis, stress responses etc. GRAS proteins have a conserved GRAS domain at C- 18 terminal and hypervariable N-terminal. The C-terminal conserved domain directly affects the 19 function of the GRAS proteins. For instance, in Arabidopsis, mutations in this domain in Slender 20 rice 1 (SLR1) and Repressor of GA (RGA) proteins cause significant phenotypic changes. GRAS 21 proteins have been reported in more than 30 plant species and till now it has been divided into 17 22 subfamilies. This review highlighted GRAS protein's importance during several biological 23 processes in plants, structural features of GRAS proteins, their expansion and diversification in 24 the plants, GRAS-interacting proteins complexes and their role in biological processes. We also 25 summarized available recent research that utilized CRISPR-Cas9 technology to manipulate GRAS 26 genes in a plant for different traits.