Frontiers in Plant Science (May 2012)
Cotton fiber: a powerful single-cell model for cell wall and celluloseresearch
Abstract
Cotton fibers are single-celled extensions of the seed epidermis. They can be isolated in pureform as they undergo staged differentiation including primary cell wall synthesis duringelongation and nearly pure cellulose synthesis during secondary wall thickening. Thiscombination of features supports clear interpretation of data about cell walls and cellulosesynthesis in the context of high throughput modern experimental technologies. Priorcontributions of cotton fiber to building fundamental knowledge about cell walls will besummarized and the dynamic changes in cell wall polymers throughout cotton fiberdifferentiation will be described. Recent successes in using stable cotton transformation to altercotton fiber cell wall properties as well as cotton fiber quality will be discussed. Future prospectsto perform experiments more rapidly through altering cotton fiber wall properties via virusinduced gene silencing will be evaluated.
Keywords
