Abstract
The genetic manipulation of perennial woody tree species presents a range of additional challenges compared to that of annual weedy crop species. These include long generation times and reproductive cycle, the heterogeneity of plants under investigation and, when investigating wood properties, a number of physical and biochemical limitations to microscopical and molecular experimentation. The use of in vitro wood formation systems for molecular studies and Agrobacterium-mediated introduction of transgenes overcomes many of these obstacles. Using a commercially relevant Eucalyptus species as model organism, we demonstrate here that in vitro wood formation systems can be readily employed to introduce transgenes into growing wood-producing tissue, initially leading to frequent transient gene expression in a range of cell types. Stable transformation events were observed as sectors of transformed tissue derived from primary transformation events in individual cells. The usefulness of such systems for the analysis of gene function during the process of wood formation and wood quality determination, as well as for constructing developmental fate maps of cambial derivatives, is discussed.
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Acknowledgements
This project was supported in part through the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Center Program, the CRC for Hardwood Fiber and Paper Science. A.S. and K.V.B. hold APA (I) scholarships awarded by the Australian Research Council (ARC). Thanks to Lawrie Wilson and Josquin Tibbits for critically reading our manuscript.
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Spokevicius, A.V., Van Beveren, K., Leitch, M.A. et al. Agrobacterium-mediated in vitro transformation of wood-producing stem segments in eucalypts. Plant Cell Rep 23, 617–624 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-004-0856-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-004-0856-1