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JXB Advance Access originally published online on August 30, 2007
Journal of Experimental Botany 2007 58(12):3227-3238; doi:10.1093/jxb/erm167
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© The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

RESEARCH PAPER

Molecular characterization of cotton GhTUA9 gene specifically expressed in fibre and involved in cell elongation

Li Li *, Xiu-Lan Wang, Geng-Qing Huang and Xue-Bao Li{dagger}

College of Life Sciences, HuaZhong Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: xbli{at}mail.ccnu.edu.cn

The microtubule cytoskeleton may play an important role in the polarized growth of fibre cells that are single-cell trichomes on the surface of cotton ovules. To investigate whether the high expression levels of {alpha}-tubulin genes are correlated with fibre elongation, nine GhTUA genes (cDNAs) encoding {alpha}-tubulins with 449–451 amino acid residues were isolated and characterized in cotton. The GhTUA genes share high sequence homology at the nucleotide level (62–93% identity) in the coding region and at the amino acid level (89–99% identity), and can be classified into two subgroups. Real-time quantitative RT-PCR analysis revealed that seven out of the nine GhTUA genes are predominantly expressed in developing fibres. Among them, GhTUA9 displays the highest level of expression, revealing its fibre specificity. The GhTUA9 transcripts in fibres reached its peak value between 5–10 DPA, and dramatically declined to undetectable levels as the ovule matured further, suggesting that its expression is developmentally-regulated in fibres. The GhTUA9 gene including the promoter region was isolated from the cotton genome. To demonstrate the specificity of the GhTUA9 promoter, the 5'-flanking region, including the promoter and 5'-untranslated region, was fused with the GUS gene. Histochemical assays demonstrated that the GhTUA9:GUS gene was specifically expressed in elongating fibres. Overexpression of GhTUA9 in fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) promoted atypical longitudinal growth of the host cells by 1.4–1.7-fold, indicating that the GhTUA9 gene is involved in cell elongation. Given all the above results, it is proposed that the GhTUA9 gene may play an important role in fibre elongation.

Key words: Cotton, expression profiles of GhTUA genes, fibre elongation, fibre-specific, microtubule, overexpression in yeast cells

* Present address: Department of Immunology, Medical Sciences Building, University of Toronto, 1 King's College Circle, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A8, Canada.

Received 5 March 2007; Revised 5 June 2007 Accepted 26 June 2007


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X.-C. He, Y.-M. Qin, Y. Xu, C.-Y. Hu, and Y.-X. Zhu
Molecular cloning, expression profiling, and yeast complementation of 19 {beta}-tubulin cDNAs from developing cotton ovules
J. Exp. Bot., July 1, 2008; 59(10): 2687 - 2695.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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