The evolution of spinnable cotton fiber entailed prolonged development and a novel metabolism.

ABSTRACT: A central question in evolutionary biology concerns the developmental processes by which new phenotypes arise. An exceptional example of evolutionary innovation is the single-celled seed trichome in Gossypium ("cotton fiber"). We have used fiber development in Gossypium as a system to understand how morphology can rapidly evolve. Fiber has undergone considerable morphological changes between the short, tightly adherent fibers of G. longicalyx and the derived long, spinnable fibers of its closest relative, G. herbaceum, which facilitated cotton domestication. We conducted comparative gene expression profiling across a developmental time-course of fibers from G. longicalyx and G. herbaceum using microarrays with approximately 22,000 genes. Expression changes between stages were temporally pr

SUBMITTER: Hovav R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2222923 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature