GhAIL6, a Member of the AP2 Family Gene, Promotes Somatic Embryogenesis in Cotton.

Background: Somatic embryogenesis (SE) is the process by which plant somatic cells are cultured in vitro without fertilization to regenerate embryos and develop into intact plants, the difficulty of cotton regeneration has severely limited functional gene research and transgenic breeding. The AP2 family is a relatively large family of transcription factor genes that regulate the process of growth and development, but the role of Aintegumenta-Like6 ( AIL6) in cotton SE has not been reported. Methods: The 35S::AIL6:GR vector was constructed and transformed into cotton JH713 by Agrobacterium-mediated method, after 3 years of self-breeding, stable genetic T3 generation positive plants were obtained, identified by Southern, and three lines were selected for the following regeneration experiments. Results: The results showed that overexpression of GhAIL6 significantly inhibited the proliferation of callus during the first 30 days, and promoted the embryogenic callus production at about 45 days. Couclusion Our results indicated that GhAIL6 was a key regulator of cotton SE, overexpression of GhAIL6 helped to improve the regeneration efficiency of cotton SE