Simultaneous Identification of Multiple Causal Mutations in Rice.

Journal: Frontiers in plant science
Published Date:

Abstract

Next-generation sequencing technologies (NGST) are being used to discover causal mutations in ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS)-mutagenized plant populations. However, the published protocols often deliver too many candidate sites and sometimes fail to find the mutant gene of interest. Accurate identification of the causal mutation from massive background polymorphisms and sequencing deficiencies remains challenging. Here we describe a NGST-based method, named SIMM, that can simultaneously identify the causal mutations in multiple independent mutants. Multiple rice mutants derived from the same parental line were back-crossed, and for each mutant, the derived F2 individuals of the recessive mutant phenotype were pooled and sequenced. The resulting sequences were aligned to the Nipponbare reference genome, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were subsequently compared among the mutants. Allele index (AI) and Euclidean distance (ED) were incorporated into the analysis to reduce noises caused by background polymorphisms and re-sequencing errors. Corrections of sequence bias against GC- and AT-rich sequences in the candidate region were conducted when necessary. Using this method, we successfully identified seven new mutant alleles from Huanghuazhan (HHZ), an elite rice cultivar in China. All mutant alleles were validated by phenotype association assay. A pipeline based on Perl scripts for SIMM is publicly available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/simm/.

Authors

  • Wei Yan
    State & Local Joint Engineering Research Center of Green Pesticide Invention and Application, College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China. Electronic address: yanwei@njau.edu.cn.
  • Zhufeng Chen
    Shenzhen Institute of Molecular Crop Design Shenzhen, China.
  • Jiawei Lu
    Shenzhen Institute of Molecular Crop Design Shenzhen, China.
  • Chunjue Xu
    Shenzhen Institute of Molecular Crop Design Shenzhen, China.
  • Gang Xie
    Shenzhen Institute of Molecular Crop Design Shenzhen, China.
  • Yiqi Li
    Shenzhen Institute of Molecular Crop Design Shenzhen, China.
  • Xing Wang Deng
    Shenzhen Institute of Molecular Crop DesignShenzhen, China; College of Life Sciences, Peking UniversityBeijing, China.
  • Hang He
    College of Life Sciences, Peking University Beijing, China.
  • Xiaoyan Tang
    Shenzhen Institute of Molecular Crop DesignShenzhen, China; Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biotechnology for Plant Development, College of Life Sciences, South China Normal UniversityGuangzhou, China.

Keywords

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