BACKGROUND Little is known about the levels of variation in lignin or other wood related genes in Salix, a genus that is being increasingly used for biomass and biofuel production. The lignin biosynthesis pathway is well characterized in a number of species, including the model tree Populus. We aimed to transfer the genomic resources already available in Populus to its sister genus Salix to ass...

BACKGROUND Microorganisms serve important functions within numerous eukaryotic host organisms. An understanding of the variation in the plant niche-level microbiome, from rhizosphere soils to plant canopies, is imperative to gain a better understanding of how both the structural and functional processes of microbiomes impact the health of the overall plant holobiome. Using Populus trees as a mo...

.....................................................................................................27 Introduction ................................................................................................28 Methods and Materials ...............................................................................31 Statistical Analyses ...........................................................

Responses of two poplar species (Populus alba and Populus x canadensis) to high copper concentrations M. Borghi a,∗, R. Tognetti b, G. Monteforti a, L. Sebastiani a a Scuola Superiore Sant’ Anna, Piazza Martiri della Libertà 33, I-56127 Pisa, Italy b Università degli Studi del Molise, Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie per l’Ambiente e il Territorio (STAT), Contrada Fonte Lappone, I-86090 Pes...

Improving saline resistance may be useful for reducing environmental susceptibility and improving yields in poplar plantations. However, the instability of genetically engineered traits and gene transfer reduce their usefulness and commercial value. To investigate whether the foreign gene is still present in the genome of receptor plants after seven years (i.e., long-term foreign gene stability...

DUF579 (domain unknown function 579) genes have been reported to play diverse roles in cell wall biosynthesis, such as in glucuronoxylan (GX) synthesis. As GX is a major type of hemicelluloses in hard wood species, how DUF579 genes function in wood formation remains to be demonstrated in planta. This study reports a Populus DUF579 gene, PtrDUF579-3, which is characterized for its function in wo...

Polyploid breeding is important in Populus genetic improvement programs because polyploid trees generally display increased height growth compared to their diploid parents. However, the genetic mechanism underlying this phenomenon remains unknown. In the present study, apical bud transcriptomes of vigorous, fast growing Populus allotriploid progeny genotypes and their diploid parents were seque...

BACKGROUND Populus is an ecologically and economically important genus of trees, but distinguishing between wild species is relatively difficult due to extensive interspecific hybridization and introgression, and the high level of intraspecific morphological variation. The DNA barcoding approach is a potential solution to this problem. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Here, we tested the discri...

F-box proteins are generally responsible for substrate recognition in the Skp1-Cullin-F-box complexes that are involved in protein degradation via the ubiquitin-26S proteasome pathway. In plants, F-box genes influence a variety of biological processes, such as leaf senescence, branching, self-incompatibility, and responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. The number of F-box genes in Populus (Po...

Aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDHs) constitute a superfamily of NAD(P)+-dependent enzymes that catalyze the irreversible oxidation of a wide range of reactive aldehydes to their corresponding nontoxic carboxylic acids. ALDHs have been studied in many organisms from bacteria to mammals; however, no systematic analyses incorporating genome organization, gene structure, expression profiles, and cis-ac...