ABSTRACT: Vine weevil adult, Otiorhynchus sulcatus Fabricius (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), associated bacterial microbiota is highly conserved across UK populations growing on strawberry plants (Fragaria x ananassa)
Project description:Breeding day-neutral strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa Duchesne) is pivotal to extend fruit-bearing season and increase the efficiency of production. However, genetic improvement of day-neutrality by the means of molecular marker technologies remains slow due to genome complexity of octoploid strawberry. This study employs an innovative approach by integrating the Subtracted Diversity Array (SDA) technology and Bulked Segregant Analysis (BSA) to facilitate the identification of molecular markers associated with day-neutrality in octoploid strawberry. A Fragaria Discovery Panel (FDP) containing 287 features specific to strawberry genome was constructed as a platform for rapid screening of DNA polymorphism between one short day (SD) strawberry DNA bulk and three day-neutral (DN) bulks varrying in flowering strength. Differential array hybridisation patterns between the DN and SD bulks revealed a novel molecular marker, FaP2E11, closely linked to CYTOKININ OXIDASE 1 (CKX1) gene possibly involved in promoting flowering under non-inductive condition. Interestingly, a 12 bp deletion was observed within the FaP2E11 sequence cloned from SD genotypes but not DN genotypes. As cytokinin is required to induce flowering, this result indicates that full sequence of FaP2E11 and the sequence with deletion are allelic variants linked to the low enzyme activity CKX1 and the wild type alleles, respectively.
Project description:In plants, microRNAs (miRNAs) play a critical role in post-transcriptional gene regulation and have been shown to control many genes involved in various biological and metabolic processes. Deep sequencing technologies have facilitated identification of species-specific or lowly expressed as well as conserved or highly expressed miRNAs in plants. Strawberry is one of the most economically important fruit throughout the world.Although miRNAs have been extensively studied in the past five years, limited systematic study of miRNAs has been performed on the Fragaria genus. These results show that regulatory miRNAs exist in agronomically important strawberry and may play an important role in strawberry growth, development, and response to disease. High throughput sequencing was employed to identify miRNAs in strawberry and try to describe their functions in strawberry growth and development
