Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom - TAIR

Using Arabidopsis thaliana to improve feedstock
quality
Feedstock quantity and quality fundamentally influence the efficiency with which
energy can be produced from biomass. Biomass quality is determined by
composition and structure of plant cell walls. Evidence has accumulated that a
mechanism exists in plants capable of monitoring and maintaining the functional
integrity of plant cell walls by changing their composition and structure.
Functionally characterising the genes involved in this mechanism opens up the
possibility of using their orthologs in future bioenergy crops like poplar, willow or
miscanthus to improve feedstock quality. In order to identify genes involved in the
cell wall integrity (CWI) mechanism, time course expression profiling
experiments were performed using Arabidopsis seedlings treated with isoxaben
(a highly specific cellulose biosynthesis inhibitor, CBI). This treatment causes
cell wall stress by preventing formation of the load bearing cellulose microfibrills
in elongating cells. The expression analysis has identified several candidate
genes that are involved in the response to CBI. We will show how different tools
have been adapted for functional characterisation of a larger number of
candidate genes and present results regarding genes of interest.
97
C46
Saturday 15:30 - 15:45
Bioenergy
Thorsten Hamann
Lucy Denness
Lars Kjaer
Priya Madhou
Alexandra Wormit
Imperial College
London