Genome-wide characterization of trichome birefringence-like genes provides insights into fiber yield improvement

Ziyin Li; Yuzhen Shi; Xianghui Xiao; Jikun Song; Pengtao Li; Juwu Gong; Haibo Zhang; Wankui Gong; Aiying Liu; Renhai Peng; Haihong Shang; Qun Ge; Junwen Li; Jingtao Pan; Quanjia Chen; Quanwei Lu; Youlu Yuan

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1127760

Genome-wide characterization of trichome birefringence-like genes provides insights into fiber yield improvement

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Mar 15:14:1127760. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1127760. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ziyin Li^{1

2

3}, Yuzhen Shi³, Xianghui Xiao^{1

3}, Jikun Song^{1

3}, Pengtao Li^{2

3}, Juwu Gong^{1

3}, Haibo Zhang², Wankui Gong³, Aiying Liu³, Renhai Peng², Haihong Shang³, Qun Ge³, Junwen Li³, Jingtao Pan³, Quanjia Chen¹, Quanwei Lu^{2

3}, Youlu Yuan^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Engineering Research Centre of Cotton, Ministry of Education, College of Agriculture, Xinjiang Agricultural University, Urumqi, China.
² School of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Anyang Institute of Technology, Anyang, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, Institute of Cotton Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Anyang, China.

Abstract

Cotton is an important fiber crop. The cotton fiber is an extremely long trichome that develops from the epidermis of an ovule. The trichome is a general and multi-function plant organ, and trichome birefringence-like (TBL) genes are related to trichome development. At the genome-wide scale, we identified TBLs in four cotton species, comprising two cultivated tetraploids (Gossypium hirsutum and G. barbadense) and two ancestral diploids (G. arboreum and G. raimondii). Phylogenetic analysis showed that the TBL genes clustered into six groups. We focused on GH_D02G1759 in group IV because it was located in a lint percentage-related quantitative trait locus. In addition, we used transcriptome profiling to characterize the role of TBLs in group IV in fiber development. The overexpression of GH_D02G1759 in Arabidopsis thaliana resulted in more trichomes on the stems, thereby confirming its function in fiber development. Moreover, the potential interaction network was constructed based on the co-expression network, and it was found that GH_D02G1759 may interact with several genes to regulate fiber development. These findings expand our knowledge of TBL family members and provide new insights for cotton molecular breeding.

Keywords: GH_D02G1759; TBL; WGCNA; cotton; expression pattern; lint percentage.

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32272188 and 32070560), the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province (202300410549), China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA, Hainan Yazhou Bay Seed Lab (B21HJ0210), the National Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Project for CAAS (CAAS-ASTIP-2016-ICR), the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Innovation Program for Science and Technology Talents (2020CB005), and the National Key R&D Program for Crop Breeding (2016YFD0100306).