Identification of pleiotropic variants associated with multiple phenotypic traits has received increasing attention in genetic association studies. Overlapping genetic associations from multiple ...traits help to detect weak genetic associations missed by single-trait analyses. Many statistical methods were developed to identify pleiotropic variants with most of them being limited to quantitative traits when pleiotropic effects on both quantitative and qualitative traits have been observed. This is a statistically challenging problem because there does not exist an appropriate multivariate distribution to model both quantitative and qualitative data together. Alternatively, meta-analysis methods can be applied, which basically integrate summary statistics of individual variants associated with either a quantitative or a qualitative trait without accounting for correlations among genetic variants. We propose a new statistical selection method based on a unified selection score quantifying how a genetic variant, i.e., a pleiotropic variant associates with both quantitative and qualitative traits. In our extensive simulation studies where various types of pleiotropic effects on both quantitative and qualitative traits were considered, we demonstrated that the proposed method outperforms the existing meta-analysis methods in terms of true positive selection. We also applied the proposed method to a peanut dataset with 6 quantitative and 2 qualitative traits, and a cowpea dataset with 2 quantitative and 6 qualitative traits. We were able to detect some potentially pleiotropic variants missed by the existing methods in both analyses. The proposed method is able to locate pleiotropic variants associated with both quantitative and qualitative traits. It has been implemented into an R package 'UNISS', which can be downloaded from http://github.com/statpng/uniss.
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Cultivated soybean (Glycine max) suffers from a narrow germplasm relative to other crop species, probably because of under‐use of wild soybean (Glycine soja) as a breeding resource. Use of a single ...nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping array is a promising method for dissecting cultivated and wild germplasms to identify important adaptive genes through high‐density genetic mapping and genome‐wide association studies. Here we describe a large soybean SNP array for use in diversity analyses, linkage mapping and genome‐wide association analyses. More than four million high‐quality SNPs identified from high‐depth genome re‐sequencing of 16 soybean accessions and low‐depth genome re‐sequencing of 31 soybean accessions were used to select 180 961 SNPs for creation of the Axiom®SoyaSNP array. Validation analysis for a set of 222 diverse soybean lines showed that 170 223 markers were of good quality for genotyping. Phylogenetic and allele frequency analyses of the validation set data indicated that accessions showing an intermediate morphology between cultivated and wild soybeans collected in Korea were natural hybrids. More than 90 unanchored scaffolds in the current soybean reference sequence were assigned to chromosomes using this array. Finally, dense average spacing and preferential distribution of the SNPs in gene‐rich chromosomal regions suggest that this array may be suitable for genome‐wide association studies of soybean germplasm. Taken together, these results suggest that use of this array may be a powerful method for soybean genetic analyses relating to many aspects of soybean breeding.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
A core collection is a subset that represents genetic diversity of the total collection. Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) is one of major food and feed crops. It is the world's most cultivated annual ...herbaceous legume. Constructing a core collection for soybean could play a pivotal role in conserving and utilizing its genetic variability for research and breeding programs. To construct and evaluate a Korean soybean core collection, genotypic and phenotypic data as well as population structure, were analyzed. The Korean soybean core collection consisted of 430 accessions selected from 2,872 collections based on Affymetrix Axiom® 180k SoyaSNP array data. The core collection represented 99% of genotypic diversity of the total collection. Analysis of population structure clustered the core collection into five subpopulations. Accessions from South Korea and North Korea were distributed across five subpopulations. Analysis of molecular variance indicated that only 2.01% of genetic variation could be explained by geographic origins while 16.18% of genetic variation was accounted for by subpopulations. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) for days to flowering, flower color, pubescent color, and growth habit confirmed that the core collection had the same genetic diversity for tested traits as the total collection. The Korean soybean core collection was constructed based on genotypic information of the 180k SNP data. Size and phenotypic diversity of the core collection accounted for approximately 14.9% and 18.1% of the total collection, respectively. GWAS of core and total collections successfully confirmed loci associated with tested traits. Consequently, the present study showed that the Korean soybean core collection could provide fundamental and practical material and information for both soybean genetic research and breeding programs.
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Mungbean (Vigna radiata) is a fast-growing, warm-season legume crop that is primarily cultivated in developing countries of Asia. Here we construct a draft genome sequence of mungbean to facilitate ...genome research into the subgenus Ceratotropis, which includes several important dietary legumes in Asia, and to enable a better understanding of the evolution of leguminous species. Based on the de novo assembly of additional wild mungbean species, the divergence of what was eventually domesticated and the sampled wild mungbean species appears to have predated domestication. Moreover, the de novo assembly of a tetraploid Vigna species (V. reflexo-pilosa var. glabra) provides genomic evidence of a recent allopolyploid event. The species tree is constructed using de novo RNA-seq assemblies of 22 accessions of 18 Vigna species and protein sets of Glycine max. The present assembly of V. radiata var. radiata will facilitate genome research and accelerate molecular breeding of the subgenus Ceratotropis.
Soybean
(L.) Merr., an important oilseed crop, is a low-cost source of protein and oil. In Southeast Asia and Africa, soybeans are widely cultivated for use as traditional food and feed and ...industrial purposes. Given the ongoing changes in global climate, developing crops that are resistant to climatic extremes and produce viable yields under predicted climatic conditions will be essential in the coming decades. To develop such crops, it will be necessary to gain a thorough understanding of the genetic basis of agronomic and plant root traits. As plant roots generally lie beneath the soil surface, detailed observations and phenotyping throughout plant development present several challenges, and thus the associated traits have tended to be ignored in genomics studies. In this study, we phenotyped 357 soybean landraces at the early vegetative (V2) growth stages and used a 180 K single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) soybean array in a genome-wide association study (GWAS) conducted to determine the phenotypic relationships among root traits, elucidate the genetic bases, and identify significant SNPs associated with root trait-controlling genomic regions/loci. A total of 112 significant SNP loci/regions were detected for seven root traits, and we identified 55 putative candidate genes considered to be the most promising. Our findings in this study indicate that a combined approach based on SNP array and GWAS analyses can be applied to unravel the genetic basis of complex root traits in soybean, and may provide an alternative high-resolution marker strategy to traditional bi-parental mapping. In addition, the identified SNPs, candidate genes, and diverse variations in the root traits of soybean landraces will serve as a valuable basis for further application in genetic studies and the breeding of climate-resilient soybeans characterized by improved root traits.
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Key message
The foxglove aphid resistance gene
Raso2
from PI 366121 was fine-mapped to 77 Kb region, and one candidate gene was identified.
The foxglove aphid (FA:
Aulacorthum solani
Kaltenbach) is ...an important insect pest that causes serious yield losses in soybean. The FA resistance gene
Raso2
from wild soybean PI 366121 was previously mapped to a 13 cM interval on soybean chromosome 7. However, fine-mapping of
Raso2
was needed to improve the effectiveness of marker-assisted selection (MAS) and to eventually clone it. The objectives of this study were to fine-map
Raso2
from PI 366121 using Axiom
®
180 K SoyaSNP array, to confirm the resistance and inheritance of
Raso2
in a different background, and to identify candidate gene(s). The 105 F
4:8
recombinant inbred lines were used to fine-map the gene and to test antibiosis and antixenosis of
Raso2
to FA. These efforts resulted in the mapping of
Raso2
on 1 cM interval which corresponds to 77 Kb containing eight annotated genes based on the Williams 82 reference genome assembly (Wm82.a2.v1). Interestingly, all nonsynonymous substitutions were in
Glyma.07g077700
which encodes the disease resistance protein containing LRR domain and expression of the gene in PI 366121 was significantly higher than that in Williams 82. In addition, distinct SNPs within
Glyma.07g077700
that can distinguish PI 366121 and diverse FA-susceptible soybeans were identified. We also confirmed that
Raso2
presented the resistance to FA and the Mendelian inheritance for single dominant gene in a different background. The results of this study would provide fundamental information on MAS for development of FA-resistant cultivars as well as functional study and cloning of the candidate gene in soybean.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Soybean is a valuable source of edible protein and oil, as well as secondary metabolites that can be used in food products, cosmetics, and medicines. However, because soybean isoflavone content is a ...quantitative trait influenced by polygenes and environmental interactions, its genetic basis remains unclear.
This study was conducted to identify causal quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with soybean isoflavone contents. A mutant-based F
population (190 individuals) was created by crossing the Korean cultivar Hwanggeum with low isoflavone contents (1,558 µg g
) and the soybean mutant DB-088 with high isoflavone contents (6,393 µg g
). A linkage map (3,049 cM) with an average chromosome length of 152 cM was constructed using the 180K AXIOM® SoyaSNP array. Thirteen QTLs related to agronomic traits were mapped to chromosomes 2, 3, 11, 13, 19, and 20, whereas 29 QTLs associated with isoflavone contents were mapped to chromosomes 1, 3, 8, 11, 14, 15, and 17. Notably, the qMGLI11, qMGNI11, qADZI11, and qTI11, which located Gm11_9877690 to Gm11_9955924 interval on chromosome 11, contributed to the high isoflavone contents and explained 11.9% to 20.1% of the phenotypic variation. This QTL region included four candidate genes, encoding β-glucosidases 13, 14, 17-1, and 17-2. We observed significant differences in the expression levels of these genes at various seed developmental stages. Candidate genes within the causal QTLs were functionally characterized based on enriched GO terms and KEGG pathways, as well as the results of a co-expression network analysis. A correlation analysis indicated that certain agronomic traits (e.g., days to flowering, days to maturity, and plant height) are positively correlated with isoflavone content.
Herein, we reported that the major QTL associated with isoflavone contents was located in the interval from Gm11_9877690 to Gm11_9955924 (78 kb) on chromosome 11. Four β-glucosidase genes were identified that may be involved in high isoflavone contents of soybean DB-088. Thus, the mutant alleles from soybean DB-088 may be useful for marker-assisted selection in developing soybean lines with high isoflavone contents and superior agronomic traits.
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The pod shattering or dehiscence is essential for the propagation of pod-bearing plant species in the wild, but it causes significant yield losses during harvest of domesticated crop plants. ...Identifying novel molecular makers, which are linked to seed-shattering genes, is needed to employ the molecular marker-assisted selection for efficiently developing shattering-resistant soybean varieties. In this study, a genetic linkage map was constructed using 115 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) developed from crosses between the pod shattering susceptible variety, Keunol, and resistant variety, Sinpaldal. A 180 K Axiom® SoyaSNPs data and pod shattering data from two environments in 2001 and 2015 were used to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) for pod shattering. A major QTL was identified between two flanking single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers, AX-90320801 and AX-90306327 on chromosome 16 with 1.3 cM interval, 857 kb of physical range. In sequence, genotype distribution analysis was conducted using extreme phenotype RILs. This could narrow down the QTL down to 153 kb on the physical map and was designated as
qPDH1-KS
with 6 annotated gene models. All exons within
qPDH1-KS
were sequenced and the 6 polymorphic SNPs affecting the amino acid sequence were identified. To develop universally available molecular markers, 38 Korean soybean cultivars were investigated by the association study using the 6 identified SNPs. Only two SNPs were strongly associated with the pod shattering. These two identified SNPs will help to identify the pod shattering responsible gene and to develop pod shattering-resistant soybean plants using marker-assisted selection.
Soybean seeds consist of approximately 40% protein and 20% oil, making them one of the world's most important cultivated legumes. However, the levels of these compounds are negatively correlated with ...each other and regulated by quantitative trait loci (QTL) that are controlled by several genes. In this study, a total of 190 F
and 90 BC
F
plants derived from a cross of Daepung (
) with GWS-1887 (
, a source of high protein), were used for the QTL analysis of protein and oil content. In the F
populations, the average protein and oil content was 45.52% and 11.59%, respectively. A QTL associated with protein levels was detected at Gm20_29512680 on chr. 20 with a likelihood of odds (LOD) of 9.57 and an R
of 17.2%. A QTL associated with oil levels was also detected at Gm15_3621773 on chr. 15 (LOD: 5.80; R
: 12.2%). In the BC
F
populations, the average protein and oil content was 44.25% and 12.14%, respectively. A QTL associated with both protein and oil content was detected at Gm20_27578013 on chr. 20 (LOD: 3.77 and 3.06; R
15.8% and 10.7%, respectively). The crossover to the protein content of BC
F
population was identified by SNP marker Gm20_32603292. Based on these results, two genes,
(S-adenosyl-l-methionine-dependent methyltransferases) and
(oxidoreductase, 2-oxoglutarate-Fe(II) oxygenase family protein), in which the amino acid sequence had changed and a stop codon was generated due to an InDel in the exon region, were identified.
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Cowpea (
(L.), 2
= 22) is a tropical crop grown in arid and semiarid regions that is tolerant to abiotic stresses such as heat and drought. However, in these regions, salt in the soil is generally ...not eluted by rainwater, leading to salt stress for a variety of plant species. This study was conducted to identify genes related to salt stress using the comparative transcriptome analysis of cowpea germplasms with contrasting salt tolerance. Using the Illumina Novaseq 6000 platform, 1.1 billion high-quality short reads, with a total length of over 98.6 billion bp, were obtained from four cowpea germplasms. Of the differentially expressed genes identified for each salt tolerance type following RNA sequencing, 27 were shown to exhibit significant expression levels. These candidate genes were subsequently narrowed down using reference-sequencing analysis, and two salt stress-related genes (
and
) with single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variation were selected. Of the five SNPs identified in
, one that caused significant amino acid variation was identified, while all nucleotide variations in
was classified as missing in the salt-resistant germplasms. The candidate genes and their variation, identified in this study provide, useful information for the development of molecular markers for cowpea breeding programs.
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