A - Papers appearing in refereed journals
Salmon, J., Ward, S. P., Hanley, S. J., Leyser, O. and Karp, A. 2014. Functional screening of willow alleles in Arabidopsis combined with QTL mapping in willow (Salix) identifies SxMAX4 as a coppicing response gene. Plant Biotechnology Journal. 12 (4), pp. 480-491. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.12154
Authors | Salmon, J., Ward, S. P., Hanley, S. J., Leyser, O. and Karp, A. |
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Abstract | Willows (Salix spp.) are important biomass crops due to their ability to grow rapidly with low fertilizer inputs and ease of cultivation in short-rotation coppice cycles. They are relatively undomesticated and highly diverse, but functional testing to identify useful allelic variation is time-consuming in trees and transformation is not yet possible in willow. Arabidopsis is heralded as a model plant from which knowledge can be transferred to advance the improvement of less tractable species. Here, knowledge and methodologies from Arabidopsis were successfully used to identify a gene influencing stem number in coppiced willows, a complex trait of key biological and industrial relevance. The strigolactone-related More AXillary growth (MAX) genes were considered candidates due to their role in shoot branching. We previously demonstrated that willow and Arabidopsis show similar response to strigolactone and that transformation rescue of Arabidopsis max mutants with willow genes could be used to detect allelic differences. Here, this approach was used to screen 45 SxMAX1, SxMAX2, SxMAX3 and SxMAX4 alleles cloned from 15 parents of 11 mapping populations varying in shoot-branching traits. Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) frequencies were locus dependent, ranging from 29.2 to 74.3 polymorphic sites per kb. SxMAX alleles were 98%-99% conserved at the amino acid level, but different protein products varying in their ability to rescue Arabidopsis max mutants were identified. One poor rescuing allele, SxMAX4D, segregated in a willow mapping population where its presence was associated with increased shoot resprouting after coppicing and colocated with a QTL for this trait. |
Keywords | Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology; Plant Sciences |
Year of Publication | 2014 |
Journal | Plant Biotechnology Journal |
Journal citation | 12 (4), pp. 480-491 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.12154 |
PubMed ID | 24393130 |
Open access | Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access |
Funder | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council |
Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs | |
Funder project or code | Maximising carbon harvest from perennial crops |
Cropping Carbon (CC) [ISPG] | |
Accelerating breeding for biomass yield in short rotation coppice willow by exploiting knowledge of shoot development in Arabidopsis | |
DEFRA NF0424 | |
Project: 4840 | |
Publisher's version | |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | |
Online | 07 Jan 2014 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 25 Nov 2013 |
Copyright license | CC BY |
Publisher | Wiley |
ISSN | 1467-7644 |
Permalink - https://repository.rothamsted.ac.uk/item/8qyx0/functional-screening-of-willow-alleles-in-arabidopsis-combined-with-qtl-mapping-in-willow-salix-identifies-sxmax4-as-a-coppicing-response-gene