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Copy Number Variation of DNA Enable Cucumber with All-Female Flowers
Recently, the innovation research team of functional genomics for vegetable from the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers (IVF) collaborating with several international labs such as Zhangjun Fei’s lab from the Boyce Thompson Institute, Cornell University has yielded progress in cucumber. Researchers revealed a recent copy number variation (CNV) of a particular DNA segment gives rise to cucumbers bearing only female flowers. The related research results have been online published in The Plant Cell on May 22, 2015.
Structural variations (SVs) form a major source of variation in DNA sequences, and have been associated with human diseases and agronomic traits. However, their formation and impact in plants remain largely unknown. The study identified SVs in cucumber using sequencing data of 115 representative cucumber accessions. Based on these SVs, functional impact, formation mechanisms and relationship to level of DNA changes in cucumber were revealed.
Most cucumbers are monoecious, bearing male and female flowers on a single plant, with the female flowers developing into fruits. In contrast, gynoecious cucumbers bear only female flowers and can set fruit at nearly each node, which supports fruit setting at each node, and therefore, the gynoecy trait was selected to ensure high yield (Figure 1A). To elucidate the genetic basis of gynoecy, many scientists worldwide have conducted lots of experiments and published lots of papers. However, no undoubted conclusion was reported. In this study, Zhang et al. show that recent copy number variations (CNV) of a particular DNA segment give rise to cucumbers bearing only female flowers (Figure 1B). This study provides a snapshot of structural DNA changes in plants and an example of a novel plant CNV successfully exploited in modern agriculture.
This work was supported by funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the National Program on Key Basic Research Projects in China (the 973 Program), the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (ASTIP) of CAAS, the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), and Multidisciplinary Research Partnership entitled “Bioinformatics: from Nucleotides to Networks” of Ghent University (Yves Van de Peer).
For more information please visit:
http://www.plantcell.org/content/early/2015/05/22/tpc.114.135848.abstract
Most cucumbers are monoecious, bearing male and female flowers on a single plant, with the female flowers developing into fruits. In contrast, gynoecious cucumbers bear only female flowers and can set fruit at nearly each node, which supports fruit setting at each node, and therefore, the gynoecy trait was selected to ensure high yield (Figure 1A). To elucidate the genetic basis of gynoecy, many scientists worldwide have conducted lots of experiments and published lots of papers. However, no undoubted conclusion was reported. In this study, Zhang et al. show that recent copy number variations (CNV) of a particular DNA segment give rise to cucumbers bearing only female flowers (Figure 1B). This study provides a snapshot of structural DNA changes in plants and an example of a novel plant CNV successfully exploited in modern agriculture.
This work was supported by funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the National Program on Key Basic Research Projects in China (the 973 Program), the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (ASTIP) of CAAS, the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), and Multidisciplinary Research Partnership entitled “Bioinformatics: from Nucleotides to Networks” of Ghent University (Yves Van de Peer).
For more information please visit:
http://www.plantcell.org/content/early/2015/05/22/tpc.114.135848.abstract
By Li Lei
lilei@caas.cn
lilei@caas.cn
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