Abstract
Key message
GhAP genes were identified as the candidates involved in cotton fiber length under the scope of fine mapping a stable fiber length QTL, qFLD05. Moreover, the transcription factor GhWRKY40 positively regulated GhAP3 to decrease fiber length.
Abstract
Fiber length (FL) is an economically important fiber quality trait. Although several genes controlling cotton fiber development have been identified, our understanding of this process remains limited. In this study, an FL QTL (qFLD05) was fine-mapped to a 216.9-kb interval using a secondary F2:3 population derived from the upland hybrid cultivar Ji1518. This mapped genomic segment included 15 coding genes, four of which were annotated as aspartyl proteases (GhAP1-GhAP4). GhAPs were identified as candidates for qFLD05 as the sequence variations in GhAPs were associated with FL deviations in the mapping population, and functional validation of GhAP3 and GhAP4 indicated a longer FL following decreases in their expression levels through virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS). Subsequently, the potential involvement of GhWRKY40 in the regulatory network was revealed: GhWRKY40 positively regulated GhAP3’s expression according to transcriptional profiling, VIGS, yeast one-hybrid assays and dual-luciferase experiments. Furthermore, alterations in the expression of the eight previously reported cotton FL-responsive genes from the above three VIGS lines (GhAP3, GhAP4 and GhWRKY40) implied that MYB5_A12 was involved in the GhWRKY40-GhAP network. In short, we unveiled the unprecedented FL regulation roles of GhAPs in cotton, which was possibly further regulated by GhWRKY40. These findings will reveal the genetic basis of FL development associated with qFLD05 and be beneficial for the marker-assisted selection of long-staple cotton.
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Data availability
The BSA-seq data can be found at NCBI under the accession PRJNA1019498 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA1019498/).
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Prof. Chen Jie, Prof. Yuan Youlu, Prof. Dai Maohua and Dr. Li Shaoqi for their long-term guidance and assistance in this project, as well as Yuanbao Biotech (Nanjing, China) for their aid in the dual-luciferase assay.
Funding
This work was supported by Basic Research Funds of Hebei Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences (HAAFS) (2021070204), the Youth Fund of Hebei Natural Science Foundation (C2021301039), and the HAAFS Science and Technology Innovation Special Project (2022KJCXZX-MHS-1). The funders had no role in the design of the study, data collection, analysis and interpretation, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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JZ, XZ and SZ conceived and designed the experiments. SZ, HW, XL, LT, XC and CL performed the experiments. SZ analyzed the data and wrote the paper. All the authors have read and approved the final version of the paper.
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Zhang, S., Wang, H., Li, X. et al. Aspartyl proteases identified as candidate genes of a fiber length QTL, qFLD05, that regulates fiber length in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.). Theor Appl Genet 137, 59 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-024-04559-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-024-04559-3