Plant Breeding and Genetics, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Institute of Biotechnology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Nat Plants. 2021 Jan;7(1):17-24. doi: 10.1038/s41477-020-00834-5. Epub 2021 Jan 15.
Sorghum and maize share a close evolutionary history that can be explored through comparative genomics. To perform a large-scale comparison of the genomic variation between these two species, we analysed ~13 million variants identified from whole-genome resequencing of 499 sorghum lines together with 25 million variants previously identified in 1,218 maize lines. Deleterious mutations in both species were prevalent in pericentromeric regions, enriched in non-syntenic genes and present at low allele frequencies. A comparison of deleterious burden between sorghum and maize revealed that sorghum, in contrast to maize, departed from the domestication-cost hypothesis that predicts a higher deleterious burden among domesticates compared with wild lines. Additionally, sorghum and maize population genetic summary statistics were used to predict a gene deleterious index with an accuracy greater than 0.5. This research represents a key step towards understanding the evolutionary dynamics of deleterious variants in sorghum and provides a comparative genomics framework to start prioritizing these variants for removal through genome editing and breeding.
高粱和玉米有着密切的进化史，可以通过比较基因组学来探索。为了在这两个物种之间进行大规模的基因组变异比较，我们分析了来自 499 条高粱品系全基因组重测序的约 1300 万个变体，以及之前在 1218 条玉米品系中鉴定的 2500 万个变体。这两个物种的有害突变在着丝粒区域普遍存在，在非同源基因中富集，且等位基因频率较低。高粱和玉米之间有害负担的比较表明，与玉米相反，高粱偏离了驯化成本假说，该假说预测与野生品系相比，驯化种的有害负担更高。此外，高粱和玉米群体遗传汇总统计数据被用来预测基因有害指数，其准确性大于 0.5。这项研究是理解高粱中有害变异进化动态的关键一步，并提供了一个比较基因组学框架，开始通过基因组编辑和育种来优先去除这些变异。
