Characterization Of The Transgenic Tobacco Plants Expressing Inflorescence-related Gene RcTAW1 From Ricinus Communis

Most of the plants in the world are flowering species.Inflorescence development largely affects crop yield and is controlled by many genes.Among them,rice TAW1 is a high-yielding gene that promotes inflorescence development and formation of more flowers and seeds.It is a member of the ALOG gene family,which is widely distributed in monocotyledons and dicotyledons.Our previous work has found that the homologous gene of TAW1 in Jatropha curcas can promote the development of inflorescence.On this basis,the present study intends to analyze the role of TAW1homologous gene?RcTAW1?in Ricinus communis?castor?that belongs to the same Euphorbiaceae family with Jatropha curcas,and further explores the effect on it when adding protein fusion partner.The major results are shown as follows:?1?Gene cloning and construction of plant expression vectorsUsing castor genomic DNA as template,the RcTAW1 gene was amplified by specific primers,and then cloned into a plant binary vector of pBI121 background to create plant expression vector pBI?RcTAW1?.Subsequently,the DNA fragment of a self-polymerizing polypeptide Et1 was inserted into vector pBI?RcTAW1?to construct plant fusion expression vector pBI?Et1-RcTAW1?.The insertions in both recombinant vectors were confirmed by sequencing.Bioinformatic analysis showed that RcTAW1 was a member of the ALOG family.?2?Characterization of transgenic tobacco plantsThe two constructed plant expression vectors were used to obtain positive transgenic tobacco plants by Agrobacterium-mediated leaf disc transformation.The preliminary analysis showed that the number of flower buds in T₀ transgenic plants was indeed higher than that of wild-type?WT?tobacco.Further analyses confirmed that the number of flower buds in the transgenic lines?T₁ generation?of both pBI?RcTAW1?and pBI?Et1-RcTAW1?was significantly higher than that of WT tobacco,and branching phenomenon occurred unexpectedly in pBI?Et1-RcTAW1?transgenic plants.In addition,RcTAW1 gene could significantly increase plant height,while the addition of Et1 fragment has no notable effect on this aspect.In conclusion,the above results demonstrate that overexpression of RcTAW1 can promote the development of plant inflorescence,and addition of Et1 fragment to RcTAW1 through gene fusion strategy can additionally facilitate the formation of branches.This would be suspected as a potential new way to increase crop yield.