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Building better trees with antisense

Nature Biotechnology volume 17, pages 750–751 (1999)Cite this article

Forest trees are one of the world's most important natural resources. As crop plants, they are in the earliest stages of domestication, and much of our wood is still harvested from natural forests. Until now, the types of genetic changes that made possible the domestication of agricultural crops have not been possible for trees because hundreds or thousands of generations are required for selection. Biotechnology provides the opportunity to make such changes through genetic engineering in a matter of years, rather than centuries.

In this issue, Vincent Chiang and colleagues1 show that an antisense construct for a gene in the lignin pathway can greatly reduce lignin, increase cellulose, and dramatically stimulate growth in transgenic aspen. Such changes could be important in tree domestication and could ultimately lead to trees that are profoundly different from their current undomesticated progenitors.

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Figure 1: Pathway for lignin biosynthesis.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Forestry (Box 8008) at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 27695, NC

    Ron Sederoff

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  1. Ron Sederoff
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Sederoff, R. Building better trees with antisense. Nat Biotechnol 17, 750–751 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/11678

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