Browsing by Author "Vakkari, Eeva"

The wide distribution of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in boreal forests and the outstanding properties of its wood have made it an economically significant resource at the forest sector. The highly valued chemical and mechanical properties of Scots pine wood are related to heartwood, a specialized tissue forming the innermost part of a mature trunk. Decay resistance of Scots pine wood is largely defined by heartwood extractives of which the stilbene pinosylvin has the highest quality trait breeding interest. Pinosylvin concentration is a high-heritability trait that positively correlates with the heartwood decay resistance. Pinosylvin biosynthesis pathway is upregulated both developmentally at the mature tree transition zone between sapwood and heartwood and as stress response in various tissues of young trees. Identification of the regulators of pinosylvin synthase could speed up quality trait breeding providing a basis for variant screening in the natural populations and for analysing functional properties of the variants. Early genotyping would enable selection of the desired quality individuals before the start of developmental pinosylvin production and significantly accelerate breeding programs. Scots pine pinosylvin synthase PST-1 is proposed to be both stress-induced and developmentally regulated. Previous studies have identified several MYELOBLASTOSIS (MYB) domain transcription factors (TFs) that co-regulate with stilbene pathway transcripts under pinosylvin production inducing conditions or that have promising homologs in other species. In this study, eight Scots pine MYB TFs were examined in PST-1 promoter interaction studies using quantitative luciferase assay and yeast one-hybrid assay. This study aimed to clone the MYB coding sequences and confirm the integrity and MYB character of the proteins they encode, and to verify whether any of the MYB TFs are direct regulators of PST-1, and to characterize the regulatory functions of the MYB TFs as activators or repressors. This study identified one MYB TF as a direct regulator of PST-1 whereas the other studied MYB TFs did not bind the most promising MYB target elements in the promoter. The discovery of a direct regulator of pinosylvin synthase provides a potential marker for early selection making the finding highly valuable for quality trait breeding efforts. Additionally, another MYB TF was detected as a potential indirect regulator of pinosylvin biosynthetic pathway or as a regulator of neighbouring pathways suggesting that it would also be an interesting target for further studies. The MYB TFs were successfully cloned and seven out of eight MYB TFs were classified into MYB subfamilies. Tentative characterizations for the MYB TFs were presented based on the sequence analysis. The Gateway compatible vectors generated in this study will facilitate future experiments. The MYB coding sequences were incorporated in the verified entry clones ready-to-use in generation of other types of expression vectors. The MYB TF plant vectors could be directly used in Arabidopsis, as well. Two multisite Gateway compatible entry clones for N-terminal fusions to VP16 and SRDX transcriptional regulatory domains were generated for the plant expression vectors. The protocol developed for the 3’ fusion entry clones comprises of sequential polymerase chain reactions easily applicable for other cloning purposes. The yeast one-hybrid prey vectors could be utilized not only in another one-hybrid but also in two-hybrid studies. Several of the MYB TFs, including the PST-1 direct regulator, were hypothesized to interact with other types of TFs. The protein – protein interaction studies would detect possible co-factors involved in the MYB TF mediated regulation of Scots pine pinosylvin synthase. Identification of each member in the regulatory complexes would enable targeting the quality trait breeding efforts most effectively