The first genetic map for a psoraleoid legume (Bituminaria bituminosa)reveals highly conserved synteny with phaseoloid legumes

Authors: NELSON, MATTHEW - COMMONWEALTH SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH ORGANISATION (CSIRO); JABBARI, JAFAR - AUSTRALIAN GENOME RESEARCH FACILITY, LTD (AGRF); TURAKULOV, RUST - AUSTRALIAN GENOME RESEARCH FACILITY, LTD (AGRF); PRADHAN, ANEETA - UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA; PAZOS-NAVARRO, MARIA - UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA; STAI, JACOB - IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY; Cannon, Steven; REAL, DANIEL - DEPARTMENT OF PRIMARY INDUSTRIES

Submitted to: Plants
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/29/2020
Publication Date: 7/31/2020
Citation: Nelson, M.N., Jabbari, J.S., Turakulov, R., Pradhan, A., Pazos-Navarro, M., Stai, J.S., Cannon, S.B., Real, D. 2020. The first genetic map for a psoraleoid legume (Bituminaria bituminosa)reveals highly conserved synteny with phaseoloid legumes. Plants. 9(8). Article 973. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants9080973.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/plants9080973

Interpretive Summary: Climate change presents farmers and ranchers with the need to identify crops that are resilient to harsh environmental conditions. A plant called tedera (Bituminaria bituminosa), native to the Canary Islands, is described in this research, as a candidate forage plant for hot and drought-prone rangeland. It has been used as a forage plant in dry areas of Mediterranean countries and in southern Australia. Tedera has also been evaluated for pharmaceutical properties - in particular, for antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory compounds that are used in the treatment of some skin diseases. A close relative of tedera, Pediumelum ("prairie turnip"), native to dry prairies of the Midwestern United States, has also been used by Native Americans for its edible tuber. The research presented here describes the first genetic map reported for this group of plants (the Psoraleae). Plant breeders use genetic maps to identify genetic markers linked to important traits. Genetic maps are also an important resource used in determining the genome sequence. One finding from this research is that large chromosomal regions have similarity with corresponding regions from other legume crops such as soybean, cowpea, and common bean. This work will aid in developing tedera as a crop for both forage and pharmaceutical uses.

Technical Abstract: This work presents the first genetic map of tedera (Bituminaria bituminosa (L.) C.H. Stirton), a drought-tolerant forage legume from the Canary Islands with useful pharmaceutical properties. It is also the first genetic map for any species in the tribe Psoraleeae (Fabaceae). The map comprises 2,042 genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) markers distributed across ten linkage groups, consistent with the haploid chromosome count for this species (n = 10). Sequence tags from the markers were used to find homologous matches in the genome sequences of the closely related species in the Phaseoleae tribe: soybean, common bean, and cowpea. No tedera linkage groups align in their entirety to chromosomes in any of these phaseoloid species, but there are long stretches of collinearity that could be used in tedera research for gene discovery purposes using the better-resourced phaseoloid species. Using Ks analysis of a tedera transcriptome against five legume genomes provides an estimated divergence time of 17.4 million years between tedera and soybean. Genomic information and resources developed here will be invaluable for breeding tedera varieties for forage and pharmaceutical purposes.