Abstract
Some naturally coloured brown cotton fibres from accessions of Gossypium hirsutum L. can be used to make textiles with enhanced flame retardancy (FR). Several independent brown fibre loci have been identified and mapped to chromosomes, but the underlying genes have not yet been identified, and the mechanism of lint fibre FR is not yet fully understood. In this study, we show that both the brown colour and enhanced FR of the Lc1 lint colour locus are linked to a 1.4Mb inversion on chromosome A07 that is immediately upstream of a gene with similarity to Arabidopsis TRANSPARENT TESTA 2 (TT2). As a result of the alternative upstream sequence, the transcription factor GhTT2_A07 is highly up-regulated in developing fibres. In turn, genes in the phenylpropanoid metabolic pathway are activated, leading to biosynthesis of proanthocyanidins and accumulation of inorganic elements. We show that enhanced FR and anthocyanin precursors appear in developing brown fibres well before the brown colour is detectible, demonstrating for the first time that the polymerized proanthocyanidins that constitute the brown colour are not the source of enhanced FR. Identifying the particular colourless metabolite that provides Lc1 cotton with enhanced FR could help minimize the use of synthetic chemical flame retardant additives in textiles.
Highlights
Coloured cotton fibres exist in various hues including light to dark brown, red, rust, and green, and are found among new world tetraploid Gossypium species including G. hirsutum L., G. barbadense L., G. darwinii G
Several independent brown fibre loci have been identified and mapped to chromosomes, but the underlying genes have not yet been identified, and the mechanism of lint fibre flame retardancy (FR) is not yet fully understood. We show that both the brown colour and enhanced FR of the Lc1 lint colour locus are linked to a 1.4 Mb inversion on chromosome A07 that is immediately upstream of a gene with similarity to Arabidopsis TRANSPARENT TESTA 2 (TT2)
We show that enhanced FR and anthocyanin precursors appear in developing brown fibres well before the brown colour is detectible, demonstrating for the first time that the polymerized proanthocyanidins that constitute the brown colour are not the source of enhanced FR
Summary
Coloured cotton fibres exist in various hues including light to dark brown, red, rust, and green, and are found among new world tetraploid Gossypium species including G. hirsutum L., G. barbadense L., G. darwinii G. Producing fibre in various shades of brown and green were allelomorphic to plants producing white fibres, with F1 plants producing an intermediate fibre colour phenotype (Ware, 1932). Researchers have characterized at least six genetic loci that are linked to brown fibre cotton (Lc1–Lc6) and result in various shades from light to dark brown. These genetic loci were demonstrated to be incompletely dominant to white cotton (Endrizzi and Kohel, 1966; Kohel, 1985). The Lc1 locus of G. hirsutum was mapped to within 3.8 cM on the long arm of chromosome A07, and the Lc2 locus was mapped to within 4.4 cM on the short arm of chromosome A06 using simple sequence repeat (SSR) and expressed sequence tag (EST)-SSR markers (Wang et al, 2014)
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