Homing in on the ‘cuckoo’ chromosome: Characterising the 4Ssh segment containing gametocidal gene Gc2 in a wheat-Ae. Sharonensis introgression line Abstract uri icon

abstract

  • Aegilops sharonensis, a wild relative of wheat, contains useful agronomical traits for wheat improvement but also a gametocidal gene. Gametocidal genes are selfish elements that ensure their preferential transmission to offspring by eliminating gametes that do not contain the gene. This leads to undesirable effects including lower yield that cannot be rectified through conventional breeding. Previous work showed that Gc2 is located at the distal end of Chr4B on the wheat-Ae. sharonensis translocation line T4B-4Ssh using genomic in situ hybridisation (GISH). This study has developed Kompetative allele-specific PCR (KASP) markers to narrow down the introgression to a 10 Mb region, and subsequently confirmed as a 9 Mb segment using skim-sequencing. Further mutational studies and bioinformatics analysis using the Ae. sharonensis genome assembly will be carried out to identify candidate genes for downstream functional studies with the aim of achieving a method of removing the notorious gametocidal genes in wheat-wild relative lines.

publication date

  • September 2022