Expression of genes associated with carbohydrate metabolism in cotton stems and roots.docVIP

BMC Plant Biology BioMedCentral Research article Open Access Expression of genes associated with carbohydrate metabolism in cotton stems and roots Earl W Taliercio*1, Gabriela Romano2, Jodi Scheffler2 and Brian G Ayre3 Address: 1USDA/ARS, 3127 Ligon St., Raleigh, North Carolina 27695, USA, 2USDA/ARS, 141 Experiment Station Road, Stoneville, Mississippi 38776, USA and 3University of North Texas, Department of Biological Sciences, 1504 W. Mulberry, SRB Rm 120, P.O. Box 305220, Denton, TX 76203 5220, USA Email: Earl W Taliercio* - Earl.Taliercio@; Gabriela Romano - Gabriela.Romano@ars.USDA.gov; Jodi Scheffler - Jodi.Scheffler@ars.USDA.gov; Brian G Ayre - bgayre@ * Corresponding author Published: 22 January 2009 Received: 8 August 2008 Accepted: 22 January 2009 BMC Plant Biology 2009, 9:11 doi:10.1186/1471-2229-9-11 This article is available from: /1471-2229/9/11 ? 2009 Taliercio et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L) is an important crop worldwide that provides fiber for the textile industry. Cotton is a perennial plant that stores starch in stems and roots to provide carbohydrates for growth in subsequent seasons. Domesticated cotton makes these reserves available to developing seeds which impacts seed yield. The goals of these analyses were to identify genes and physiological pathways that establish cotton stems and roots as physiological sinks and investigate the role these pathways play in cotton development during seed set. Results: Analysis of field-grown cotton plants indicated that starch levels peaked about the time of first anthesis and then declined similar to reports in greenhouse-grown cotton plants. Starch accumulated