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April 21, 2020

The genome sequence of segmental allotetraploid peanut Arachis hypogaea.

Authors: Bertioli, David J and Jenkins, Jerry and Clevenger, Josh and Dudchenko, Olga and Gao, Dongying and Seijo, Guillermo and Leal-Bertioli, Soraya C M and Ren, Longhui and Farmer, Andrew D and Pandey, Manish K and Samoluk, Sergio S and Abernathy, Brian and Agarwal, Gaurav and Ballén-Taborda, Carolina and Cameron, Connor and Campbell, Jacqueline and Chavarro, Carolina and Chitikineni, Annapurna and Chu, Ye and Dash, Sudhansu and El Baidouri, Moaine and Guo, Baozhu and Huang, Wei and Kim, Kyung Do and Korani, Walid and Lanciano, Sophie and Lui, Christopher G and Mirouze, Marie and Moretzsohn, Márcio C and Pham, Melanie and Shin, Jin Hee and Shirasawa, Kenta and Sinharoy, Senjuti and Sreedasyam, Avinash and Weeks, Nathan T and Zhang, Xinyou and Zheng, Zheng and Sun, Ziqi and Froenicke, Lutz and Aiden, Erez L and Michelmore, Richard and Varshney, Rajeev K and Holbrook, C Corley and Cannon, Ethalinda K S and Scheffler, Brian E and Grimwood, Jane and Ozias-Akins, Peggy and Cannon, Steven B and Jackson, Scott A and Schmutz, Jeremy

Like many other crops, the cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is of hybrid origin and has a polyploid genome that contains essentially complete sets of chromosomes from two ancestral species. Here we report the genome sequence of peanut and show that after its polyploid origin, the genome has evolved through mobile-element activity, deletions and by the flow of genetic information between corresponding ancestral chromosomes (that is, homeologous recombination). Uniformity of patterns of homeologous recombination at the ends of chromosomes favors a single origin for cultivated peanut and its wild counterpart A. monticola. However, through much of the genome, homeologous recombination has created diversity. Using new polyploid hybrids made from the ancestral species, we show how this can generate phenotypic changes such as spontaneous changes in the color of the flowers. We suggest that diversity generated by these genetic mechanisms helped to favor the domestication of the polyploid A. hypogaea over other diploid Arachis species cultivated by humans.

Journal: Nature genetics
DOI: 10.1038/s41588-019-0405-z
Year: 2019

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