Overexpression of a Sucrose Synthase Gene Indirectly Improves Cotton Fiber Quality Through Sucrose Cleavage.

The study aims to improve fiber traits of local cotton cultivar through genetic transformation of sucrose synthase () gene in cotton. Sucrose synthase (SuS) is an important factor that is involved in the conversion of sucrose to fructose and UDP-glucose, which are essential for the synthesis of cell wall cellulose. In the current study, we expressed a synthetic gene in cotton plants under the control of a CaMV35S promoter. Amplification of an 813-bp fragment using gene-specific primers confirmed the successful introduction of gene into the genome of cotton variety CEMB-00. High mRNA expression was observed in two transgenic cotton plants, MA0023 and MA0034, when compared to the expression in two other transgenic cotton plants, MA0035 and MA0038. Experiments showed that mRNA expression was positively correlated with SuS activity at the vegetative (54%) and reproductive stages (40%). Furthermore, location of transgene was found to be at chromosome no. 9 in the form of single insertion, while no signal was evident in non-transgenic control cotton plant when evaluated through and karyotyping analysis. Fiber analyses of the transgenic cotton plants showed increases of 11.7% fiber length, 18.65% fiber strength, and up to 5% cellulose contents. An improvement in the micronaire value of 4.21 was also observed in the MA0038 transgenic cotton line. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed that the fibers of the transgenic cotton plants were highly spiral with a greater number of twists per unit length than the fibers of the non-transgenic control plants. These results determined that gene expression influenced cotton fiber structure and quality, suggesting that has great potential for cotton fiber quality improvement.