GhTCEE1 enhances the activation activity of GhTCE1 by forming heterodimers. A, Sequences encoding the GhTCE1 C-terminus from aa residues 160–331 without transactivation activity were fused to sequences encoding a GAL4 BD domain and designated GhTCE1-BD. The prey AD was linked to callus cDNAs. Negative represents no growth, positive represents growth. SD-TL/TLHA represents synthetically defined medium dropouts Trp, Leu or Trp, Leu, His, and Ade, respectively. B, BiFC assay between GhTCE1–nYFP and GhTCEE–cYFP in tobacco epidermal cells. Bars = 30 μm. C, LUC assays in tobacco leaves and cotton callus protoplasts. Promoters of GhLTP2 and GhLTP3 were, respectively, fused upstream of LUC. 35Spro:REN was used as an internal control. GhTCE1 and GhTCEE1 were fused downstream of 35Spro in pGreenII 62-SK. The pGreenII 62-SK empty vector was used as control named Null. For each tobacco leaf, four constructs were expressed: (i) pGreenII 0800-LUC:GhLTP2pro+35Spro:REN+pGreenII 62-SK empty (Null/LTP2pro): (ii) pGreenII 0800-LUC:GhLTP2pro+35Spro:REN+pGEreenII 62-SK:GhTCE1 (GhTCE1/LTP2pro); (iii) pGreenII 0800-LUC:GhLTP2pro+35Spro:REN+pGreenII 62-SK:GhTCEE1 (GhTCEE1/LTP2pro); and (iv) pGreenII 0800-LUC:GhLTP2pro+ 35Spro:REN+pGreenII 62-SK:GhTCE1+GhTCEE1 (GhTCE1+GhTCEE1/LTP2pro) following Agrobacterium-mediated transfection. D, Activation of LUC expression by GhTCE1/GhTCEE1 in cotton callus protoplasts. Relative activation level represents the ratio of fluorescence intensity of LUC/REN with GhTCE1 to LUC/REN without GhTCE1. Error bars represent ± standard errors of three biological replicates as described in Figure 3E. Statistical significance is indicated by *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, Supplemental Data Set S2.