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A cotton α1,3-/4-fucosyltransferase-encoding gene, FucT4, plays an important role in cell elongation and is significantly associated with fiber quality

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Abstract

Fucosylation, one of the key posttranslational modifications, plays an important role in plants. It is involved in the development, signal transduction, reproduction, and disease resistance. α1,3-/4-Fucosyltransferase is responsible for transferring L-fucose from GDP-L-fucose to the N-glycan to exert fucosylational functions. However, the roles of the fucosyltransferase gene in cotton remain unknown. This study provided a comprehensive investigation of its possible functions. A genome-wide analysis identified four, four, eight, and eight FucT genes presented in the four sequenced cotton species, diploid Gossypium raimondii, G. arboreum, tetraploid G. hirsutum acc. TM-1, and G. barbadense cv. H7124, respectively. These FucTs were classified into two groups, with FucT4 homologs alone as a group. We isolated FucT4 in TM-1 and H7124, and named it GhFucT4 and GbFucT4, respectively. Quantitative RT-PCR and transcriptome data demonstrated that GhFucT4 had the highest expression levels in fibers among all GhFucT genes. Association studies and QTL co-localization supported the possible involvement of GhFucT4 in cotton fiber development. GhFucT4 and GbFucT4 shared high sequence identities, and FucT4 had higher expression in H7124 fiber tissues compared with TM-1. Furthermore, ectopic expression of FucT4 in transgenic Arabidopsis promoted root cell elongation, upregulated expression of genes related to cell wall loosening, and led to longer primary root. These results collectively indicate that FucT4 plays an important role in promoting cell elongation and modulating fiber development, which could be utilized to improve fiber quality traits in cotton breeding.

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Abbreviations

DPA:

Days post-anthesis

QTL:

Quantitative trait locus

PAGE:

Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis

qRT-PCR:

Quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction

SNP:

Single nucleotide polymorphism

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dr. Xiongming Du, Institute of Cotton Research of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, for providing the phenotypic data of the natural population consisting of 278 G. hirsutum cultivars. Many thanks to Miss Yue Feng in Nanjing Agricultural University for the preparation of preliminary plant materials.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31701472), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (KJQN201801, KJQN201806), and Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Modern Crop Production project (No. 10). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, Hybrid Cotton R & D Engineering Research Center, Ministry of Education, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, China

    Xiaoguang Shang, Lijie Zhu, Yujia Duan & Wangzhen Guo

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  1. Xiaoguang Shang
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  2. Lijie Zhu
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  3. Yujia Duan
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Contributions

GWZ conceived the study, GWZ and SXG designed the experiments, SXG, ZLJ, and DYJ performed the experiments, SXG analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript, and GWZ revised the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wangzhen Guo.

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438_2020_1687_MOESM1_ESM.jpg

Supplementary file1 Fig. S1 Sequence analysis of GhFucT gene. a Phylogenetic analysis of isolated GhFucT genes and Arabidopsis thaliana FucT family genes. b Sequence alignment of GhFucT and AtFucT_C amino acids. c Analysis of deduced GhFucT protein. The signal peptide in red, Glyco_transf_10 domain in blue, glycosylation amino acid sites in green and phosphorylation amino acid sites in blue were indicated and drawn with IBS software (JPG 2693 kb)

Supplementary file2 (JPG 203 kb)

438_2020_1687_MOESM3_ESM.jpg

Supplementary file3 Fig. S3 Hypocotyl length between wild type and transgenic Arabidopsis etiolated seedlings. Average hypocotyl lengths of WT and transgenic etiolated seedlings after 4 days growth under darkness conditions. Significant differences between wild type and transgenic lines were calculated by the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test (p < 0.05). Vertical bars represented standard error (SE) (JPG 252 kb)

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Shang, X., Zhu, L., Duan, Y. et al. A cotton α1,3-/4-fucosyltransferase-encoding gene, FucT4, plays an important role in cell elongation and is significantly associated with fiber quality. Mol Genet Genomics 295, 1141–1153 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-020-01687-5

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