Location: Plant Stress and Germplasm Development Research
Title: Ngs-enabled fast gene discovery from sorghum pedigreed mutant libraryAuthor
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Submitted to: Plant and Animal Genome Conference
Publication Type: Abstract Only Publication Acceptance Date: 12/8/2019 Publication Date: 1/11/2020 Citation: Xin, Z., Ware, D. 2020. Ngs-enabled fast gene discovery from sorghum pedigreed mutant library. Plant and Animal Genome Conference. PAG XXVIII W600. Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: CRISPR-cas9-derived genome editing tools are rapidly evolving technologies that will revolutionize medicine and plant breeding. However, known promising targets are required for effective application of this exciting technology. Chemical, such as ethyl methane sulfonate, induced mutagenesis is a powerful tool to generate new variations including those that have potential to improve breeding. We have developed a pedigreed mutant library in sorghum inbred line BTx623, which is used to generate reference genome sequence. The mutant library harbors a wide range of phenotypes, many of which may have potential to improve sorghum. To rapidly identify the causal mutations for these altered phenotypes, we have developed a bioinformatic pipeline based on bulk segregant analysis of pooled homozygous mutants selected from segregating F2 populations. In the last few years, we have discovered over 30 causal mutations underlying important agronomy traits. However, the presence of large number of unrelated background mutations may hamper their direct uses in breeding. It may take years to remove the unlinked background mutations by genetic backcrosses and even longer for the linked background mutations. With the precision and low off-target mutations, CRISPR-cas9 genome editing tools can be used re-create the causal mutations in elite lines with minimal background mutation to accelerate breeding. A combination of fast causal gene discovery with the precision genomic editing will truly revolutionize plant breeding. |
