LaBonte Nicholas R, Zhao Peng, Woeste Keith
Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States.
Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi'an, China.
Front Plant Sci. 2018 Jun 25;9:810. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2018.00810. eCollection 2018.
Chestnuts () are major nut crops in East Asia and southern Europe, and are unique among temperate nut crops in that the harvested seeds are starchy rather than oily. Chestnut species have been cultivated for three millennia or more in China, so it is likely that artificial selection has affected the genome of orchard-grown chestnuts. The genetics of Chinese chestnut ( Blume) domestication are also of interest to breeders of hybrid American chestnut, especially if the low-growing, branching habit of Chinese chestnut, an impediment to American chestnut restoration, is partly the result of artificial selection. We resequenced genomes of wild and orchard-derived Chinese chestnuts and identified selective sweeps based on pooled whole-genome SNP datasets. We present candidate gene loci for chestnut domestication and discuss the potential phenotypic effects of candidate loci, some of which may be useful genes for chestnut improvement in Asia and North America. Selective sweeps included predicted genes potentially related to flower phenology and development, fruit maturation, and secondary metabolism, and included some genes homologous to domestication candidates in other woody plants.
板栗是东亚和南欧的主要坚果作物，在温带坚果作物中独具特色，因为收获的种子富含淀粉而非油脂。在中国，板栗的种植已有三千多年历史，因此人工选择很可能已经影响了果园种植板栗的基因组。中国板栗（Castanea mollissima Blume）驯化的遗传学也引起了美国杂交板栗育种者的兴趣，特别是如果中国板栗低矮、分枝的习性（这对美国板栗的恢复构成障碍）部分是人工选择的结果。我们对野生和果园来源的中国板栗基因组进行了重测序，并基于全基因组SNP数据集鉴定了选择性清除区域。我们提出了板栗驯化的候选基因位点，并讨论了候选位点的潜在表型效应，其中一些可能是亚洲和北美板栗改良的有用基因。选择性清除区域包括预测的可能与花物候和发育、果实成熟以及次生代谢相关的基因，并且包括一些与其他木本植物驯化候选基因同源的基因。
