Appendix S1-supplemental methods Purification of recombinant proteins and cell free degradation assay Cells (E. coli, BL21) were induced by 0.1 mM IPTG (Gold Biotech) at A600 ~ 0.7, and allowed to grow for 4 hours at 18°C. Cells were lysed with Cell-lytic B reagent (Sigma), and the clarified lysates were diluted in binding buffer (140 mM NaCl, 2.7 mM KCl, 10 mM Na2HPO4, 1.8 mM KH2PO4 and 1 mM DTT) supplemented with protease inhibitor cocktail (Sigma) and 1 mM PMSF. Diluted lysate was loaded onto a glutathione Sepharose 4B column (GE Healthcare Biosciences). After extensive washing with the binding buffer recombinant proteins were eluted in 50 mM Tris-Cl (pH 8.8) containing 50 mM reduced glutathione (Sigma) and dialyzed at 4°C for 4 hrs in a buffer containing 25 mM Tris-Cl (pH 7.5), 10 mM NaCl, 10 mM MgCl2, 10% glycerol and 1 mM DTT. One-week-old Arabidopsis seedlings were frozen in liquid nitrogen and crushed in degradation buffer (25 mM Tris-Cl (pH 7.5), 10 mM NaCl, 10 mM MgCl2, 4 mM PMSF, 5 mM DTT and 10 mM ATP). Protein concentration was determined using Bradford reagent (Bio-Rad). Each reaction mix contained 500 µg of total protein and 100 ng of recombinant protein. For the proteasome inhibitor experiments, 200 µM MG132 was added 30 min prior to the experiment. The reaction mixes were incubated at 22°C, and the reactions were stopped by addition of SDS-PAGE sample buffer and boiling. Plasmid construction for protoplast assay For the protoplast assay, a modified pKYLX80 vector (5XRE)-35Spro:LUC, containing five tandem repeats of GAL responsive elements (5XRE) followed by a minimal CaMV35S promoter (−46 to +8 relative to transcription start site), a firefly luciferase gene (LUC) and rbcS terminator, was used as a reporter (Figure S9 and (Bai et al., 2011; Schardl et al., 1987). The N-terminal region of UPL3 (UPL31-470) was cloned in a modified pBlueScript (pBS) vector containing the mirabilis mosaic virus (MMV) promoter (Dey and Maiti 1999), GAL4 DNA-binding domain (amino acids 1–147), and rbcS terminator, to generate plasmid pBD-UPL31-470. pBD-GL3, pBD-GL3K535R,K536R, pBD-EGL3, and pBD-EGL3K493R,K495R, were generated by fusion of the corresponding cDNAs to the GAL4 DNA-binding domain under the MMV promoter and rbcS terminator. Full-length GL3, EGL3, and GL1 cDNAs were cloned separately into a modified pBS vector, under the CaMV 35S promoter and rbcS terminator, to generate 35Spro:GL3, 35Spro:EGL3, and 35Spro:GL1, respectively, which were used as effectors in the protoplast transient assay. A modified pBS plasmid, 35Spro:uidA, containing uidA under the CaMV 35S promoter and rbcS terminator, was used as an internal control (Figure S9). Accession Numbers Sequence data from this article can be found in The Arabidopsis Information Resource (http://www.arabidopsis.org/): GL3 (At5g41315), EGL3 (At1g63650), UPL3 (At4g38600), ACT2 (At3g18780) and TUB3 (At5g62700). Arabidopsis T-DNA insertion mutants and transgenic lines and their identification numbers are SALK_120957C (gl3-4), SALK_077543 (egl3-2) and SAIL_339_F05 (upl3-2). The upl3-2 lines were previously described (Downes et al., 2003; Kurepa et al., 2008; Kurepa et al., 2009). The gl3 egl3 double mutant is a gift from Dr. Erich Grotewold, and was previously described (Morohashi et al., 2007). References Bai, Y., Pattanaik, S., Patra, B., Werkman, J.R., Xie, C.H. and Yuan, L. (2011) Flavonoidrelated basic helix-loop-helix regulators, NtAn1a and NtAn1b, of tobacco have originated from two ancestors and are functionally active. Planta, 234, 363-375. Dey, N. and Maiti, I.B. (1999) Structure and promoter/leader deletion analysis of mirabilis mosaic virus (MMV) full-length transcript promoter in transgenic plants. Plant Mol Biol, 40, 771-782. Downes, B.P., Stupar, R.M., Gingerich, D.J. and Vierstra, R.D. (2003) The HECT ubiquitinprotein ligase (UPL) family in Arabidopsis: UPL3 has a specific role in trichome development. Plant J, 35, 729-742. Kurepa, J., Toh-e, A. and Smalle, J.A. (2008) 26S proteasome regulatory particle mutants have increased oxidative stress tolerance. The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology, 53, 102-114. Kurepa, J., Wang, S., Li, Y., Zaitlin, D., Pierce, A.J. and Smalle, J.A. (2009) Loss of 26S proteasome function leads to increased cell size and decreased cell number in Arabidopsis shoot organs. Plant physiology, 150, 178-189. Morohashi, K., Zhao, M., Yang, M., Read, B., Lloyd, A., Lamb, R. and Grotewold, E. (2007) Participation of the Arabidopsis bHLH factor GL3 in trichome initiation regulatory events. Plant Physiol, 145, 736-746. Schardl, C.L., Byrd, A.D., Benzion, G., Altschuler, M.A., Hildebrand, D.F. and Hunt, A.G. (1987) Design and construction of a versatile system for the expression of foreign genes in plants. Gene, 61, 1-11.