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April 21, 2020  |  

Origin and evolution of the octoploid strawberry genome.

Authors: Edger, Patrick P and Poorten, Thomas J and VanBuren, Robert and Hardigan, Michael A and Colle, Marivi and McKain, Michael R and Smith, Ronald D and Teresi, Scott J and Nelson, Andrew D L and Wai, Ching Man and Alger, Elizabeth I and Bird, Kevin A and Yocca, Alan E and Pumplin, Nathan and Ou, Shujun and Ben-Zvi, Gil and Brodt, Avital and Baruch, Kobi and Swale, Thomas and Shiue, Lily and Acharya, Charlotte B and Cole, Glenn S and Mower, Jeffrey P and Childs, Kevin L and Jiang, Ning and Lyons, Eric and Freeling, Michael and Puzey, Joshua R and Knapp, Steven J

Cultivated strawberry emerged from the hybridization of two wild octoploid species, both descendants from the merger of four diploid progenitor species into a single nucleus more than 1 million years ago. Here we report a near-complete chromosome-scale assembly for cultivated octoploid strawberry (Fragaria?×?ananassa) and uncovered the origin and evolutionary processes that shaped this complex allopolyploid. We identified the extant relatives of each diploid progenitor species and provide support for the North American origin of octoploid strawberry. We examined the dynamics among the four subgenomes in octoploid strawberry and uncovered the presence of a single dominant subgenome with significantly greater gene content, gene expression abundance, and biased exchanges between homoeologous chromosomes, as compared with the other subgenomes. Pathway analysis showed that certain metabolomic and disease-resistance traits are largely controlled by the dominant subgenome. These findings and the reference genome should serve as a powerful platform for future evolutionary studies and enable molecular breeding in strawberry.

Journal: Nature genetics
DOI: 10.1038/s41588-019-0356-4
Year: 2019

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