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BY-NC-ND 3.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access December 18, 2015

Cross-species PCR and field studies on Paulownia elongata: A potential bioenergy crop

  • Chhandak Basu , Nirmal Joshee , Tigran Gezalian , Brajesh Nanda Vaidya , Asada Satidkit , Homa Hemmati and Zachary David Perry
From the journal Bioethanol

Abstract

Paulownia elongata is a short-rotation fast growing tree and is known for high biomass accumulation and carbon sequestration potential. Optimization of protocols for nucleic acid extraction, PCR, RT-PCR, and other molecular biology techniques are required for better understanding of cellulose synthesis and to assess the potential of Paulownia as a biofuel tree. The main objective of this work was to study a putative cellulose synthase amplicon expression under various environmental conditions and evaluate the potentials of Paulownia as a biofuel tree. Using cross-species PCR an amplicon representative of a putative cellulose synthase gene from Paulownia was identified. This 177-bp long DNA sequence was 46% similar with cellulose synthase genes from Arabidopsis as expected. Gene specific primers for this particular Paulownia cellulose synthase gene were designed and reverse transcription PCR was performed to confirm its transcription. We report an inexpensive cDNA dot-blot method to study expression of this gene under various environmental conditions. We observed that cold and, to a lesser extent, heat stress downregulated its expression. This information will help to understand cellulose deposition in plant cell wall under stressful conditions. To the best of our knowledge this is the first characterization of a cDNA sequence from Paulownia elongata.

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Received: 2014-10-28
Accepted: 2015-5-4
Published Online: 2015-12-18
Published in Print: 2016-1-1

© 2015 Chhandak Basu, et al.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

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