| Industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa) is a highly productive crop that is well suited to cultivation in Canada. To better understand the development of bast (phloem) fiber secondary walls and to facilitate reverse genetics screening for improved germplasm, I undertook two sets of microarray experiments. The first compared transcript expression in stem peels at three positions along the length of the stem. The second set of microarray experiments compared transcript expression in adjacent tissue layers along the radial axis of the stem. The transcripts that were enriched in fiber-producing tissues in both studies were consistent with a dynamic program of cell wall deposition. Detailed qRT-PCR analysis of specific lignification genes identified the best targets for reverse genetics. Finally, as a first step towards establishing a virally induced gene silencing (VIGS) system, I identified viruses that produced visual symptoms of infection, although qRT-PCR failed to confirm the infection. |
