Unraveling Prevalence and Effects of Deleterious Mutations in Maize Elite Lines across Decades of Modern Breeding.

ABSTRACT: Future breeding is likely to involve the detection and removal of deleterious alleles, which are mutations that negatively affect crop fitness. However, little is known about the prevalence of such mutations and their effects on phenotypic traits in the context of modern crop breeding. To address this, we examined the number and frequency of deleterious mutations in 350 elite maize inbred lines developed over the past few decades in China and the United States. Our findings reveal an accumulation of weakly deleterious mutations and a decrease in strongly deleterious mutations, indicating the dominant effects of genetic drift and purifying selection for the two types of mutations, respectively. We also discovered that slightly deleterious mutations, when at lower frequencies, were more like

SUBMITTER: Sun S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10414807 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature