Functional Analysis of the Gossypium arboreum Genome

Abstract

Gossypium arboreum is an Old World relative of the more commonly cultivated commercial species Gossypium hirsutum, a newer genetic line formed in the New World. G. arboreum has the important property that it can be cultivated in severely hot, dry climates. The genome of G. arboreum has not been completely sequenced, and annotation for the genome is not extensive. We studied the genome of G. arboreum by using cross-species hybridization studies with genomic microarrays for the more annotated species, Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa. Approximately 30% of the probes on the A. thaliana and O. sativa microarrays were hybridized effectively by target samples prepared from G. arboreum genomic DNA. Many of genes tentatively identified by hybridization function in various levels of the stress response. Cross-species hybridization can provide effective clues as to potentially valuable genes that may be present in a less well-studied species such as G. arboreum. The stress response genes tentatively identified in these studies should provide useful clues for further studies toward the development of hardier strains of cotton.

Expression Profile of Early Responsive Genes Under Salt Stress in Upland Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.)

“…Currently, whole genome sequences of cotton are not available and functional annotations of cotton genes are quite limited. Therefore, salt-responsive gene isolation and salt tolerance improvement in cotton are with great challenge (Barthelson et al 2010).…”

Gene Expression is Highly Regulated in Early Developing Fruit of Apple

“…In recent years, global analysis of mRNA expression has emerged as a valuable tool for studying global effects of gene expression for a wide range of biological processes such as plant defense, environmental stress response, circadian clock, and fruit development, among others (Aharoni and Vorst 2002;Panthee et al 2009; Barthelson et al 2010;Chi et al 2011;Stolf-Moreira et al 2011;Yang et al 2011). This approach is particularly useful when applied to specific tissues or conditions wherein discovery of new genes can be efficiently pursued along with a global analysis of transcriptional profiles.…”

Expression Analysis of Defense-Related Genes in Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) after Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum Infection and Following Chemical Elicitation using a Salicylic Acid Analog and Methyl Jasmonate

“…GSTs were among the 14 Gossypium arboreum genes that were identified tentatively as toxin catabolic process genes providing resistance to fungal pathogens and oxidative stress (Barthelson et al 2010). Specific GST isoforms have been reported to be upregulated during fungal infection in barley (Durrant and Dong 2004), Arabidopsis (Lu et al 2005), and in cotton (Dowd et al 2004).…”

“…The two PR genes were selected due to the fact that orthologs of them between various plant species are implicated in mediating SA-and/or JA-dependent signal transduction pathways, allowing to consider them as presumptive representative gene indicators of SA-and/or JA-dependent defense responses (Norman-Setterblad et al 2000;Jwa et al 2001;McGhee et al 2001;Hwang et al 2003). Additionally, GSTs are proposed to be involved in cell redox homeostasis during defense reactions against similar pathogens (Wagner et al 2002;Dean et al 2005;Barthelson et al 2010). Finally, we assessed the level of oxidative burst in cotton roots after pathogen elicitation following the aforementioned pre-treatments.…”