Libert Brice Tonfack
University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon
The novel and promising biotechnological strategies to improve forest plants growth and wood quality involve building highprecision vector to precisely engineer cell wall biosynthesis in the complex phenomena such as wood formation in timber plants. In this study, a comparative functional and in silico analyses of four promoters from woody and Arabidopsis thaliana plants was performed. The promoter regions (1.1-2 kbp) of secondary cell wall-specific genes were successfully PCR amplified with gDNA extracted from Arabidopsis thaliana col-0, Eucalyptus grandis and Populus high-value hybrid (P. alba x P. grandidentata). GUS and GFP analyses showed that vectors constructed with A. thaliana derived promoters were highly and precisely interfascicular and xylary fiber-specific while those engineered with woody plants derived promoters were also vascular (xylem and phloem) specific. In silico analysis revealed the presence of specific cis-regulatory elements that may turn off woody plantā?? promoters activities in interfascicular fibers. Overall, our results in this study implicate woody plant EgrNAC61 and PWND1A promoters as genetic tools for driving gene expression in vascular tissues while AthSND1 promoter is fiber specific tool.
Email: libert.brice@gmail.com
