Abstract
Cellulose, the most abundant constituent material of the plant cell walls, is a major structural component of plant biomass. Manipulating cellulose synthesis (CesA) genes by genetic engineering technology, to increase cellulose production may thus offer novel opportunities for plant growth and development. To investigate this, here we produced transgenic “Populus 895 plants” overexpressing the cellulose synthase (CesA2) gene derived from Pinus massoniana under the control of constitutive 35S promoter, via Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Relative expression levels of PmCesA2 were functionally characterized in poplar hybrid clone “Nanlin895” (Populus deltoides × Populus euramericana). The results demonstrated the transgenic lines showed enhanced growth performance with increased biomass production than did the untransformed controls. It is noteworthy that the overexpression of PmCesA2 in poplar led to an altered cell wall polysaccharide composition, which resulted in the thickening of the secondary cell wall and xylem width under scanning electron microscopy. Consequently, the cellulose and lignin content were increased. Hence, this study suggests that overexpression of PmCesA2 could be used as a potential candidate gene to enhance cellulose synthesis and biomass accumulation in genetically engineered trees.
Highlights
Plant cell walls are a terrifically important source of raw material for food, fuel, and industrially chemicals (Carroll and Somerville, 2009)
Phylogenetic tree shows that PmCesA2 in pine is ortholog of PtCesA2 in poplar related secondary wall and the results confirmed the same function of these genes
Overexpression of PmCesA2 resulted in improved cellulose synthesis, plant growth, and biomass production in transgenic poplar lines compared to wild type (WT) control plants, together with increased secondary wall thickening and width of the xylem
Summary
Plant cell walls are a terrifically important source of raw material for food, fuel, and industrially chemicals (Carroll and Somerville, 2009). Nairn and Haselkorn (2005) have shown that the phylogenetic and expression analysis of three loblolly pine CesA genes representing they are orthologous to the CesA genes in angiosperms which is responsible for cellulose synthesis in the secondary cell walls. These data suggested that these three genes PtCesA1, PtCesA2, and PtCesA3 have been linked to secondary xylem development in gymnosperms Pinus taeda. Cesa5/cesa double mutants were seedling lethal (Desprez et al, 2007), a mutation in CesA6 -related genes (CesA2, CesA5, and CesA9) revealed only a mild phenotype (Scheible et al, 2001; Cano-Delgado et al, 2003) and cesa2/ cesa6/cesa triple mutants showed pollen lethality (Persson et al, 2007)
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