Abstract
Background: Plant secondary cell wall is a renewable feedstock for biofuels and biomaterials production. Arabidopsis VASCULAR-RELATED NAC DOMAIN (VND) has been demonstrated to be a key transcription factor regulating secondary cell wall biosynthesis. However, less is known about its role in the woody species. Results: Here we report the functional characterization of Populus deltoides WOOD-ASSOCIATED NAC DOMAIN protein 3 (PdWND3A), a sequence homolog of Arabidopsis VND4 and VND5 that are members of transcription factor networks regulating secondary cell wall biosynthesis. PdWND3A was expressed at higher level in the xylem than in other tissues. The stem tissues of transgenic P. deltoides overexpressing PdWND3A (OXPdWND3A) contained more vessel cells than that of wild-type plants. Furthermore, lignin content and lignin monomer syringyl and guaiacyl (S/G) ratio were higher in OXPdWND3A transgenic plants than in wild-type plants. Consistent with these observations, the expression of FERULATE 5-HYDROXYLASE1 (F5H1), encoding an enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of sinapyl alcohol (S unit monolignol), was elevated in OXPdWND3A transgenic plants. Saccharification analysis indicated that the rate of sugar release was reduced in the transgenic plants. In addition, OXPdWND3A transgenic plants produced lower amounts of biomass than wild-type plants. Conclusions: PdWND3A affects lignin biosynthesis and composition and negatively impacts sugar release and biomass production.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 486 |
| Journal | BMC Plant Biology |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 11 2019 |
Funding
This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy BioEnergy Science Center and the Center for Bioenergy Innovation. The BioEnergy Science Center and the Center for Bioenergy Innovation are U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Centers supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The funding body has no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript. * Correspondence: [email protected] Notice: This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/ doe-public-access-plan). The views and opinions of the authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. 1BioEnergy Science Center and Biosciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA 2Center for Bioenergy Innovation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| BioEnergy Science Center | |
| LLC | |
| Office of Biological and Environmental Research | |
| U.S. Department of Energy BioEnergy Science Center | |
| U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Centers | |
| UT-Battelle | |
| Savannah River Operations Office, U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Center for Bioenergy Innovation |
Keywords
- F5H
- Lignin
- Populus
- S/G ratio
- Saccharification
- Sinapyl alcohol
- VND
