The uniform box product was introduced by Scott Williams in 2001, but very little was done with it until the recent (2010 and 2012) [B1], [H1] dissertations of Jocelyn Bell and Jeffrey Hankins. Their results had to do with two questions that Williams posed a decade earlier: whether the uniform box product of compact spaces is normal, and whether it is paracompact. Hankins answered the latter qu...

Given the prevalence of the use of rhetorical relations in the generation of text (Itovy, 1989; Moore and Paris, 1988; Scott and Souza, 1990), it is surprising how little work has actually been done on the grammatical realization of these relations. Most systems, based on Mann and Thompson's formulation of Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann and Thompson, 1988), have adopted simplified solutions ...

Cotton fiber is multigenic trait controlled by number of genes. Previous studies suggest that one of these genes may be responsible for switching cotton fiber growth on and off to influence the fiber quality produced from a cotton seed. In the present study, the Gossypium hirsutum GhEXPA8 fiber expansin gene was introduced into local cotton variety NIAB 846 by using an Agrobacterium-mediated ge...

COBRA-Like (COBL) genes, which encode a plant-specific glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchored protein, have been proven to be key regulators in the orientation of cell expansion and cellulose crystallinity status. Genome-wide analysis has been performed in A. thaliana, O. sativa, Z. mays and S. lycopersicum, but little in Gossypium. Here we identified 19, 18 and 33 candidate COBL genes fro...

Calcineurin B-like (CBL) proteins, as calcium sensors, play pivotal roles in plant responses to diverse abiotic stresses and in growth and development through interaction with CBL-interacting protein kinases (CIPKs). However, knowledge about functions and evolution of CBLs in Gossypium plants is scarce. Here, we conducted a genome-wide survey and identified 13, 13 and 22 CBL genes in the progen...

The cotton (Gossypium spp.) fiber is a unique elongated cell that is useful for investigating cell differentiation. Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of factors such as sugar metabolism, the cytoskeleton, and hormones, which are commonly known to be involved in plant cell development, while the secondary metabolites have been less regarded. By mining public data and comparing an...

We report the development and characterization of a "wide-cross whole-genome radiation hybrid" (WWRH) panel from cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.). Chromosomes were segmented by gamma-irradiation of G. hirsutum (n = 26) pollen, and segmented chromosomes were rescued after in vivo fertilization of G. barbadense egg cells (n = 26). A 5-krad gamma-ray WWRH mapping panel (N = 93) was constructed and g...

Aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDHs) are a superfamily of enzymes which play important role in the scavenging of active aldehydes molecules. In present work, a comprehensive whole-genomic study of ALDH gene superfamily was carried out for an allotetraploid cultivated cotton species, G. hirsutum, as well as in parallel relative to their diploid progenitors, G. arboreum and G. raimondii. Totally, 30 a...