Songtao Gui, Wenjie Wei, Chenglin Jiang, Jingyun Luo, Lu Chen, Shenshen Wu, Wenqiang Li, Yuebin Wang, Shuyan Li, Ning Yang, Qing Li, Alisdair R. Fernie and Jianbing Yan

Genome Biology (2022) 23:178

Published: 23 August 2022

【英文摘要】

Background

Maize (Zea mays L.) is at the vanguard facing the upcoming breeding challenges. However, both a super pan-genome for the Zea genus and a comprehensive genetic variation map for maize breeding are still lacking.

Results

Here, we construct an approximately 6.71-Gb pan-Zea genome that contains around 4.57-Gb non-B73 reference sequences from fragmented de novo assemblies of 721 pan-Zea individuals. We annotate a total of 58,944 pan-Zea genes and find around 44.34% of them are dispensable in the pan-Zea population. Moreover, 255,821 common structural variations are identified and genotyped in a maize association mapping panel. Further analyses reveal gene presence/absence variants and their potential roles during domestication of maize. Combining genetic analyses with multi-omics data, we demonstrate how structural variants are associated with complex agronomic traits.

Conclusions

Our results highlight the underexplored role of the pan-Zea genome and structural variations to further understand domestication of maize and explore their potential utilization in crop improvement.

【论文链接】
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-022-02742-7