Dataset Information

MSH7 confers quantitative variation in pollen fertility and boosts grain yield in maize.

ABSTRACT: Fertile pollen is critical for the survival, fitness, and dispersal of flowering plants, and directly contributes to crop productivity. Extensive mutational screening studies have been carried out to dissect the genetic regulatory network determining pollen fertility, but we still lack fundamental knowledge about whether and how pollen fertility is controlled in natural populations. We used a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to show that ZmGEN1A and ZmMSH7, two DNA repair-related genes, confer natural variation in maize pollen fertility. Mutants defective in these genes exhibited abnormalities in meiotic or post-meiotic DNA repair, leading to reduced pollen fertility. More importantly, ZmMSH7 showed evidence of selection during maize domestication, and its disruption resulted in a substantial increase in grain yield for both inbred and hybrid. Overall, our study describes the first systematic examination of natural genetic effects on pollen fertility in plants, providing valuable genetic resources for optimizing male fertility. In addition, we find that ZmMSH7 represents a candidate for improvement of grain yield.

SUBMITTER: Jiang L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11022798 | biostudies-literature | 2024 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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MSH7 confers quantitative variation in pollen fertility and boosts grain yield in maize.

Jiang Luguang L Guo Ting T Song Xinyuan X Jiang Huan H Lu Minhui M Luo Jinhong J Rossi Vincenzo V He Yan Y

Plant biotechnology journal 20240123 5

Fertile pollen is critical for the survival, fitness, and dispersal of flowering plants, and directly contributes to crop productivity. Extensive mutational screening studies have been carried out to dissect the genetic regulatory network determining pollen fertility, but we still lack fundamental knowledge about whether and how pollen fertility is controlled in natural populations. We used a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to show that ZmGEN1A and ZmMSH7, two DNA repair-related genes, conf ...[more]

PMID: 38263872

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Project description:Heterosis refers to a quantitative phenomenon in which F1 hybrid trait values exceed the mean of the parental values in a positive direction. Generally, it is dependent on a high degree of heterozygosity, which is maintained in hybrid breeding by developing parental lines in separate, genetically distinct heterotic groups. The mobility of small RNAs (sRNAs) that mediate epigenetic regulation of gene expression renders them promising candidates for modulating the action of combined diverse genomes in trans-and evidence already indicates their contribution to transgressive phenotypes. By sequencing small RNA libraries of a panel of 21 maize parental inbred lines we found a low overlap of 35% between the sRNA populations from both distinct heterotic groups. Surprisingly, in contrast to genetic or gene expression variation, parental sRNA expression variation is negatively correlated with grain yield (GY) heterosis. Among 0.595 million expressed sRNAs, we identified 9,767, predominantly 22- and 24-nt long sRNAs, which showed an association of their differential expression between parental lines and GY heterosis of the respective hybrids. Of these sRNAs, 3,485 or 6,282 showed an association with high or low GY heterosis, respectively, thus the low heterosis associated group prevailing at 64%. The heterosis associated sRNAs map more frequently to genes that show differential expression between parental lines than reference sets. Together these findings suggest that trans-chromosomal actions of sRNAs in hybrids might add up to a negative contribution in heterosis formation, mediated by unfavorable gene expression regulation. We further revealed an exclusive accumulation of 22-nt sRNAs that are associated with low GY heterosis in pericentromeric genomic regions. That recombinational suppression led to this enrichment is indicated by its close correlation with low recombination rates. The existence of this enrichment, which we hypothesize resulted from the separated breeding of inbred lines within heterotic groups, may have implications for hybrid breeding strategies addressing the recombinational constraints characteristic of complex crop genomes.

Dataset Information

MSH7 confers quantitative variation in pollen fertility and boosts grain yield in maize.

Publications

MSH7 confers quantitative variation in pollen fertility and boosts grain yield in maize.

Similar Datasets

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