17 research outputs found
Molecular and phenotypic profiling from base to the crown in maritime pine wood-forming tissue
Research• Environmental, developmental and genetic factors affect variation in wood properties
at the chemical, anatomical and physical levels. Here, the phenotypic variation observed
along the tree stem was explored and the hypothesis tested that this variation could be
the result of the differential expression of genes/proteins during wood formation.
• Differentiating xylem samples of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) were collected
from the top (crown wood, CW) to the bottom (base wood, BW) of adult trees.
These samples were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)
and analytical pyrolysis. Two main groups of samples, corresponding to CW and BW,
could be distinguished from cell wall chemical composition.
• A genomic approach, combining large-scale production of expressed sequence
tags (ESTs), gene expression profiling and quantitative proteomics analysis, allowed
identification of 262 unigenes (out of 3512) and 231 proteins (out of 1372 spots)
that were differentially expressed along the stem.
• A good relationship was found between functional categories from transcriptomic
and proteomic data. A good fit between the molecular mechanisms involved in
CW–BW formation and these two types of wood phenotypic differences was also
observed. This work provides a list of candidate genes for wood properties that will
be tested in forward genetic