One goal of these experiments was to extend the cotton dbEST to represent a range of tissues including fiber initials and identify genes important to fiber initiation.
The method developed to isolate RNA from fiber initials of Gossypium hirsutum allowed the direct isolation and analysis of genes expressed during fiber initiation.
Wang, L., Cook, A., Patrick, J. W., Chen, X. Y. & Ruan, Y. L. Silencing the vacuolar invertase gene GhVIN1 blocks cotton fiber initiation from the ovule epidermis, probably by suppressing a cohort of regulatory genes via sugar signaling.
Advances in genetic resources, DNA markers, DNA sequence information, and gene expression data have indeed provided new insights into fiber initiation, elongation and maturation.
Spinnable cotton fiber development is delineated into four discrete but overlapping developmental stages: fiber initiation, elongation, secondary wall biosynthesis, and maturation [17], [20], [21].
There is more fiber development gene information accumulated from the four fiber development stages, fiber initiation, elongation, second wall deposition, and maturation than from the study of transcription factors.
Fiber initiation also requires brassinosterol production [ 2].
Brassinosterols play an important role in fiber initiation [ 2, 21].
Fiber initiation requires transcription and therefore transcription factors are likely to play an important role in fiber initiation.
Four well annotated genes with a fiber initiation-specific pattern of expression give potentially new insight into fiber initiation.
Genes that peak in expression during fiber initiation then decrease in expression during elongation would be expected to play a specific role in fiber initiation.
