The wax gourd genomes offer insights into the genetic diversity and ancestral cucurbit karyotype

First author: Dasen Xie; Affiliations: Vegetable Research Institute, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (广东省农科院蔬菜所): Guangzhou, China

Corresponding author: Zhonghua Zhang

The botanical family Cucurbitaceae includes a variety of fruit crops with global or local economic importance. How their genomes evolve and the genetic basis of diversity remain largely unexplored. In this study, we sequence the genome of the wax gourd (Benincasa hispida), which bears giant fruit up to 80 cm in length and weighing over 20 kg. Comparative analyses of six cucurbit genomes reveal that the wax gourd genome represents the most ancestral karyotype, with the predicted ancestral genome having 15 proto-chromosomes. We also resequence 146 lines of diverse germplasm and build a variation map consisting of 16 million variations. Combining population genetics and linkage mapping, we identify a number of regions/genes potentially selected during domestication and improvement, some of which likely contribute to the large fruit size in wax gourds. Our analyses of these data help to understand genome evolution and function in cucurbits.

葫芦科植物包括具有全球或地方重要经济价值的各种水果作物。目前，有关这些水果作物的基因组如何演化、遗传基础的多样性等还所知甚少。本文中，作者对冬瓜进行了全基因组测序，冬瓜果实巨大，长可达80厘米，重量最大超过20kg。六个葫芦科基因组的比较分析显示冬瓜的基因组具有最古老的核型，而预测的葫芦科祖先物种的染色体数目为15。作者还对冬瓜146个种质资源材料进行了重测序，并且构建了一个包含1600万个变异的变异图谱。结合群体遗传学和遗传图谱，作者鉴定到了一些在冬瓜驯化和遗传改良过程中受到选择的基因组区域或基因，其中一些很有可能作用于冬瓜果实的大小。本文的结果有利于将来我们对于葫芦科作物的基因组演化和功能的深入理解。

通讯：张忠华 (http://ivf.caas.cn/rctd/yjy/zzh_20171127/index.htm)

个人简介：2001年，青岛农业大学，学士；2006年，浙江大学，博士。

研究方向：蔬菜基因组与遗传育种。

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13185-3

Journal: Nature Communications

Published date: December 14, 2019