Populus trichocarpa

Populus trichocarpa Nisqually-1 is a clone of black cottonwood that is widely used as a model woody plant. It was the first woody plant to have a full genome sequence and remains today as the model for growth, metabolism, development, and adaptation for all woody dicotyledonous plants. It is one of the best-annotated plant genomes available. It is also currently studied to improve bioenergy feedstocks and to learn about responses to environmental variation that may result from climate change. It is the best characterized woody plant for lignin biosynthesis. In spite of its role as a model woody plant, many important genetic applications have been limited because it was particularly difficult for DNA transformation. The ability to transform P. trichocarpa is a central component of a systems biology approach to the study of metabolic and developmental processes, where in combination with genome and transcriptome sequencing, all the expressed genes for specific pathways can be defined, cloned, and characterized for biological function. We previously reported on a method for Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation in P. trichocarpa(Song et al. Plant Cell Physiol 47: 1582-1589, 2006). Since then, we have optimized the protocol based on many experiments that varied in tissue manipulation, media, DNA constructs and Agrobacterium strains. A modified step-by-step protocol for Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of stem explants is described here. The health of the tissue explants and the time of cocultivation are among the critical steps in the protocol for successful transformation. This updated protocol should be helpful to many laboratories that are currently carrying out P. trichocarpa transformation. It should also encourage many labs that have not yet had success with P. trichocarpa to try again.