<p> </p> <p>Phosphorus (P) is an essential macronutrient for plant growth and development. P deficiency is becoming one of the most limiting factors for crop productivity. It has been discovered that vascular tissue-mediated systemic signaling plays important roles in plant responses to P deficient growth conditions. In order to understand vascular tissue-specific molecular alterations in response to P deficiency, I used <em>Plantago major </em>as a model species to study the transcriptomic alterations in vascular tissues because it is fast and easy to dissect pure vascular tissues from this plant. I identified 237 differentially expressed genes involved in various roles to P deficiency, such as “phosphate metabolism and remobilization”, “sucrose metabolism, loading and synthesis” and “plant hormone metabolism and signal transduction”. In addition, translating ribosome affinity purification (TRAP) was used to identify 547 differentially expressed genes from the Arabidopsis vascular tissues. <em>AtERF</em>, one of the downregulated genes, was chosen for further functional characterization. My results demonstrated that <em>AtERF </em>is specifically expressed in vascular tissues and it encodes a transcription factor. Over-expression of <em>AtERF </em>led to a purple vein phenotype, decreased growth of shoots and roots, and reduced Pi concentrations in shoots and roots. The <em>erf </em>mutant plants displayed larger shoots and roots, and increased Pi concentration in shoots and roots. Molecular analysis in the over-expression and mutant plants showed that genes related to hormone metabolisms and root architecture establishment might be the major players enabling plants to cope with low P. The discoveries from this study may be used to implement strategies for the production of crops with increased P uptake efficiency. </p>