Understanding bamboo flowering based on large-scale analysis of expressed sequence tags

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Unlike other plants, bamboo (Bambusoideae) flowering is an elusive physiological phenomena, because it is unpredictable, longperiodic, gregarious, and uncontrollable; also, bamboo plants usually die after flowering. The flowering mechanism in Arabidopsis thaliana, a eudicot model species, is well established, but it remains unknown in bamboo species. We found 4470 and 3878 expressed sequence tags in the flower bud and vegetative shoot cDNA libraries, respectively, of the bamboo species, Bambusa oldhamii. Different genes were found expressed in bamboo flower buds compared to vegetative shoots, based on the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences functional categorization; flowering-related genes were also identified in this species. We also identified Arabidopsis flowering-specific homologs that are involved in its photoperiod in this bamboo species, along with autonomous, vernalization and gibberellin-dependent pathways, indicating that bamboos may have a similar mechanism to control floral transition. Some bamboo expressed sequence tags shared high similarity with those of rice, but others did not match any known sequences. Our data lead us to conclude that bamboo may have its own unique flowering genes. This information can help us understand bamboo flowering and provides useful experimental methods to study the mechanisms involved.

Ectopic expression of the BoTFL1-like gene of Bambusa oldhamii delays blossoming in Arabidopsis thaliana and rescues the tfl1 mutant phenotype

“…Two cDNA libraries have been established from flower buds and vegetative shoots of B. oldhamii. From these libraries, 4470 and 3878 ESTs have been annotated, respectively, and many flowering-related genes have been identified (Lin et al, 2010). Recently, a draft sequence of the genome of moso bamboo (Phyllostachys heterocycla) was produced and a large number of candidate flowering genes were identified and shown to be transcription factor genes, heat shock protein genes or other stress-responsive genes (Peng et al, 2013).…”

“…Bamboo plants used for gene cloning and expression analysis were obtained from the bamboo tissue culture room of Zhejiang Forestry Academy, the Nurturing Station for the State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Silviculture, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University; this is the same source as used in a previous study (Lin et al, 2010). Vegetative shoots and floral buds were collected from plants subcultured for two weeks, and used to obtain RNA for the real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis.…”

Isolation and Partial Characterization of an R2R3MYB Transcription Factor from the Bamboo Species Fargesia fungosa

“…The P. heterocycla ESTs represent the only current significant set of bamboo R2R3MYB sequences available on GenBank or other publically accessible databases. The 14 Bambusa oldhamii sequences annotated as R2R3MYBs by Lin et al (2010) were not included, as the sequences were not readily available from DNA databases. The 20 characterized ESTs from developing Phyllostachys pubescens shoots characterized by Zhou et al (2011) do not contain any MYB sequences.…”

“…Until the recent publication of EST sets of Phyllostachys heterocycla (Moso bamboo; Peng et al 2010) and Bambusa (Liu et al 2008;Lin et al 2010), bamboo was the only large subfamily of Poaceae with little genomic information available, and there is still a paucity of functional molecular information for this key group of species. We report here the isolation from Fargesia fungosa of a member of the R2R3MYB transcription factor family with strong similarity to genes demonstrated to regulate lignification in other plant species.…”

Bamboo Regeneration via Embryogenesis and Organogenesis

“…Because bamboos flowering is unpredictable and has a long interval, the manipulation of bamboo crossbreeding is difficult (Lin et al, 2010a(Lin et al, , 2010bLu et al, 2009). Gene transformation is another efficient approach to increase productivity and quality in plants.…”