Difference between revisions of "IC4R001-GWAS-2011-21829395"

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== Project Title ==
 
== Project Title ==
'''   '''
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''' Genetic Architecture of Aluminum Tolerance in Rice( Oryza sativa ) Determined through Genome-Wide Association Analysis and QTL Mapping  '''
  
 
==The Background of This Project==
 
==The Background of This Project==
Rice reproductive development is sensitive to high temperature and soil nitrogen supply, both of which are predicted to be increased threats to rice crop yield. Rice spikelet development is a critical process that determines yield, yet little is known about the transcriptional regulation of rice spikelet development in response to the combination of heat stress and low nitrogen availability. '''In this project, the Researchers profiled gene expression of rice spikelet development during meiosis under heat stress and different nitrogen levels using RNA-seq.'''
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[[File:gwas-1.PNG|700px|thumb|right|'''Figure 1.''' '' GWA Analysis of Al Tolerance within and across Rice Subpopulations.'']]
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* While rice (Oryza sativa) is significantly more Al tolerant than other cereals, no genes underlying Al tolerance in rice have been reported. Using genome-wide association(GWA) and bi-parental QTL mapping, we investigated the genetic architecture of Al tolerance in rice. Japonica varieties were twice as Al tolerant as indica and aus varieties. Overall, 57% of the phenotypic variation was correlated with subpopulation, consistent with observations that different genes and genomic regions were associated with Al tolerance in different subpopulations. Four regions identified by GWA co-localized with a priori candidate genes, and two highly significant regions co-localized with previously identified quantitative trait loci(QTL). Haplotype and sequence analysis around the candidate gene, Nrat1, identified a susceptible haplotype explaining 40% of the Al tolerance variation within the aus subpopulation and three non-synonymous mutations within Nrat1 that were predictive of Al sensitivity. Using Indica 6 Japonica mapping populations, we identified QTLs associated with transgressive variation where alleles from a susceptible indica or aus parent enhanced Al tolerance in a tolerant japonica background. This work demonstrates the importance of subpopulation in interpreting and manipulating complex traits in rice and provides a roadmap for breeders aiming to capture genetic value from phenotypically inferior lines.
  
 
==Plant Culture & Treatment==
 
==Plant Culture & Treatment==
[[File:RNA-Seq-2015-26714321-1.png|thumb|right|550px|'''Figure 1.''' ''Table 1. Summary of transcriptome sequencing.'']]
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* Plants were grown hydroponically in a growth chamber as described by Famoso et al. Al tolerance was determined based on relative root growth (RRG) after three days in Al (160 m M Al 3+ ) or control solution. The hydroponic solution used in this study was chemically designed and optimized for rice Al tolerance screening; for a detailed comparison of the phenotypic procedures employed in this work compared to previously published rice Al tolerance work see Famoso et al. (2010). To obtain uniform seedlings, 80 seeds were germinated and the 30 most uniform seedlings were visually selected and transferred to a control hydroponic solution for a 24 hour adjustment period. After the 24 hour adjustment period, root length was measured with a ruler and the 20 most uniform seedlings were selected and distributed to fresh control solution (0 uM Al 3+ ) or Al treatment solution (160 uM Al 3+ ). Plants were grown in their respective treatments for ,72 hours and the total root system growth was quantified using an imaging and root quantification system as described by Famoso et al.(2010). The mean total root growth was calculated for Al treated and control plants and RRG was calculated as mean growth (Al)/mean growth (control). The 373 genotypes screened for Al tolerance and used in the association analysis are part of a set of 400 O. sativa genotypes that have been genotyped with 44,000 SNPs as described by Zhao et al.
* Ganxin203, a super-hybrid early rice (Oryza sativa L. ssp. indica) variety, was grown in hydroponic conditions in 2014 at High-Tech Agricultural Science and Technology Park of Jiangxi Agricultural University (latitude: 28° 46 0 N, longitude: 115° 50 0 E, altitude: 48.80m), Jiangxi Province, China.
 
* Plants were subjected to one of four treatments composed of two factors, nitrogen and temperature:
 
# NN: normal nitrogen level (165 kg ha -1 , as the control) with normal temperature (30°C, as the control);
 
# HH: high nitrogen level (264 kg ha -1 ) with high temperature (37°C);
 
# NH: normal nitrogen level and high temperature; 
 
# HN: high nitrogen level and normal temperature.
 
 
 
==Illumina Sequencing==
 
* Total RNA from young florets undergoing meiosis was isolated using TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. For transcriptome sequencing and assembly, RNA from all four treatments were mixed and pooled equally to obtain more sequence infor-mation, however, each treatment was subjected individually to digital gene expression (DGE) sequencing.
 
* Oligo(dT) beads were used to isolate poly(A) + mRNA from total RNA, and mRNA were disrupted into short fragments using fragmentation buffer. These short fragments were used as templates for random hexamer primer to synthesize first-strand cDNA.The second-strand cDNA was synthesized by adding buffer, dNTPs, RNase, and DNA polymerase I.
 
* The library was sequenced using an Illumina HiSeq TM 2000 platform, performed at the Beijing Genomics Institute. The raw reads were stored in a fastq format.
 
  
 
==Research Findings==
 
==Research Findings==
* In this study, researchers obtained a total of 52,250,482 clean reads (accumulated nucleotides, 4,702,543,380 bp), which were assembled into 106,229 contigs with Q20 percentage and GC content of 96.32%, and 52.98%, respectively, and then the contigs were assembled into 76,103 unigenes, with a mean length of 520 bp.  
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* Two immortalized QTL mapping populations were analyzed for Al tolerance. One consisted of 134 recombinant inbred lines (RIL) derived from the cross IR64/Azucena , and the other was comprised of 78 backcross inbred lines (BIL) derived from the cross Nipponbare/Kasalath//Nipponbare. These populations were used to evaluate Al tolerance using three different indices of relative root growth (RRG), (1) longest root growth (LRG-RRG), (2) primary root growth (PGR-RRG) and total root growth (TRG-RRG) (see Materials and Methods for details). The phenotypic distribution was approximately normal for each population, no matter which root screening index was used. The QTL mapping populations allowed us to determine which of the three root evaluation methods would be most useful for evaluating the diversity panel as a whole.<br><br>
* Researchers annotated the transcriptome by blasting all the distinct unigene sequences against NR, NT, Swiss-Prot, KEGG, COG, and GO databases by BLASTX with a cut-off E-value of 10 −5 . This resulted in a total of 75,807 unigenes (99.61% of all unigenes) that were above the cut-off value (Table 2). 60,788 unigenes were annotated by NR (79.88% of all unigenes; Table 2), and 75,593 (99.33%), 34,776 (45.70%), 31,311 (41.14%), 18,041 (23.71%), and 44,131 (57.99%) unigenes were annotated by NT, Swiss-Prot, KEGG, COG, and GO databases, respectively.
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* To identify Al tolerance loci based on genome-wide association(GWA) mapping, we used an existing genotypic dataset consisting of 36,901 SNPs, and the total root growth (TRG-RRG) Al tolerance phenotype generated on 373 O. sativa accessions over the course of this study. GWA mapping was conducted, using SNPs with a MAF.0.05, across all 373 genotypes as well as independently within the indica, aus, temperate japonica, and tropical japonica subpopulations '''(Figure 1)'''. The Efficient Mixed-Model Association (EMMA) model was used in each analysis (both within and across subpopulations) to correct for confounding effects due to subpopulation structure and relatedness between individuals. As the subpopulation structure was highly correlated with Al tolerance, it was observed that analyzing all samples (373) together with the EMMA model resulted in an overcorrection (causing type 2 error) and a corresponding reduction in SNP significance. To address this problem, a PCA approach was also employed when analyzing all (373) samples together. However, the PCA approach resulted in a slight under-correction for population structure, demonstrating that results from each GWA method has limitations when used across all germplasm in this highly structured diversity panel.
[[File:RNA-Seq-2015-26714321-2.png|center|thumb|800px|'''Figure 2.''' ''GO analysis of unigenes.'']]
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* We chose to further investigate the variation in and around the Nrat1 gene on chromosome 2 because multiple independent lines of evidence supported the existence of a gene(s) in this region responsible for a significant portion of the variation for Al tolerance in rice. Evidence included a strong GWA peak in the aus subpopulation, a previously reported QTL, and the localization of the Nrat1 Al transporter gene. Using the 44 K SNP data, LD in this region was calculated to be ,150 kb in the aus subpopulation and 11 distinct haplotypes were observed in the entire diversity panel across a 139 kb region around the Nrat1 gene(1.536 Mb–1.675 Mb on chr. 2) (Figure 2). Haplotype 1 (Hap.1), which was unique to the aus subpopulation, was found in 8 Al sensitive aus accessions and one Al sensitive aus/indica admixed line. These 9 genotypes were among the least Al tolerant (7 th percentile, mean RRG=0.16) of the 373 accessions screened. Haplotype 1 explained 40% of the phenotypic variation for Al tolerance within the aus subpopulation. In addition, four aus accessions that were highly or moderately Al tolerant were found to contain a tropical japonica introgression across this region (described in the section on Introgression analysis below).
* We classified the functions of the predicted genes using Gene Ontology (GO) assignments. Based on sequence homology, 44,131 unigenes and 304,589 sequences,were categorized into 57 functional groups (Fig 2). In each of the three main categories (biological process, cellular component, and molecular function) of the GO classification, the major subcategories were: “metabolic process”, “cellular process”, and “single-organism process” for biological process, “cell”,“cell part”, and “organelle” for cellular components, and “binding”, “catalytic activity”, and “transporter activity” for molecular function.
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[[File:IC4R001-GWAS-2011-21829395-2.PNG|700px|thumb|right|'''Figure 2.''' '' Haplotype analysis of the Nrat1 gene region.'']]
* To validate the expression profiles obtained by RNA-seq, researchers performed RT-qPCR analysis of 10 randomly selected DEGs . For all 10 genes, they found the same expression profiles as the original RNA-seq data, suggesting that the RNA-seq data obtained for the DEGs analysis was credible.
 
[[File:RNA-Seq-2015-26714321-3.png|left|thumb|500px|'''Figure 3.''' ''Table 1. Summary of transcriptome sequencing.'']]
 
[[File:RNA-Seq-2015-26714321-4.png|center|thumb|430px|'''Figure 4.''' ''GO analysis of unigenes.'']]<br>
 
  
<br><br>
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== Labs working on this Project ==
 +
* Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America
 +
* Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America
 +
* Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture and Health, Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America
  
== Labs working on this Project ==
+
==Corresponding Author==
* Key Laboratory of Crop Physiology, Ecology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Education, College of Agronomy, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China
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* ''' Susan R. McCouch'''(srm4@cornell.edu)
* Southern Regional Collaborative Innovation Center for Grain and Oil Crops, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China
 

Latest revision as of 09:48, 21 June 2016

Project Title

Genetic Architecture of Aluminum Tolerance in Rice( Oryza sativa ) Determined through Genome-Wide Association Analysis and QTL Mapping

The Background of This Project

Figure 1. GWA Analysis of Al Tolerance within and across Rice Subpopulations.
  • While rice (Oryza sativa) is significantly more Al tolerant than other cereals, no genes underlying Al tolerance in rice have been reported. Using genome-wide association(GWA) and bi-parental QTL mapping, we investigated the genetic architecture of Al tolerance in rice. Japonica varieties were twice as Al tolerant as indica and aus varieties. Overall, 57% of the phenotypic variation was correlated with subpopulation, consistent with observations that different genes and genomic regions were associated with Al tolerance in different subpopulations. Four regions identified by GWA co-localized with a priori candidate genes, and two highly significant regions co-localized with previously identified quantitative trait loci(QTL). Haplotype and sequence analysis around the candidate gene, Nrat1, identified a susceptible haplotype explaining 40% of the Al tolerance variation within the aus subpopulation and three non-synonymous mutations within Nrat1 that were predictive of Al sensitivity. Using Indica 6 Japonica mapping populations, we identified QTLs associated with transgressive variation where alleles from a susceptible indica or aus parent enhanced Al tolerance in a tolerant japonica background. This work demonstrates the importance of subpopulation in interpreting and manipulating complex traits in rice and provides a roadmap for breeders aiming to capture genetic value from phenotypically inferior lines.

Plant Culture & Treatment

  • Plants were grown hydroponically in a growth chamber as described by Famoso et al. Al tolerance was determined based on relative root growth (RRG) after three days in Al (160 m M Al 3+ ) or control solution. The hydroponic solution used in this study was chemically designed and optimized for rice Al tolerance screening; for a detailed comparison of the phenotypic procedures employed in this work compared to previously published rice Al tolerance work see Famoso et al. (2010). To obtain uniform seedlings, 80 seeds were germinated and the 30 most uniform seedlings were visually selected and transferred to a control hydroponic solution for a 24 hour adjustment period. After the 24 hour adjustment period, root length was measured with a ruler and the 20 most uniform seedlings were selected and distributed to fresh control solution (0 uM Al 3+ ) or Al treatment solution (160 uM Al 3+ ). Plants were grown in their respective treatments for ,72 hours and the total root system growth was quantified using an imaging and root quantification system as described by Famoso et al.(2010). The mean total root growth was calculated for Al treated and control plants and RRG was calculated as mean growth (Al)/mean growth (control). The 373 genotypes screened for Al tolerance and used in the association analysis are part of a set of 400 O. sativa genotypes that have been genotyped with 44,000 SNPs as described by Zhao et al.

Research Findings

  • Two immortalized QTL mapping populations were analyzed for Al tolerance. One consisted of 134 recombinant inbred lines (RIL) derived from the cross IR64/Azucena , and the other was comprised of 78 backcross inbred lines (BIL) derived from the cross Nipponbare/Kasalath//Nipponbare. These populations were used to evaluate Al tolerance using three different indices of relative root growth (RRG), (1) longest root growth (LRG-RRG), (2) primary root growth (PGR-RRG) and total root growth (TRG-RRG) (see Materials and Methods for details). The phenotypic distribution was approximately normal for each population, no matter which root screening index was used. The QTL mapping populations allowed us to determine which of the three root evaluation methods would be most useful for evaluating the diversity panel as a whole.

  • To identify Al tolerance loci based on genome-wide association(GWA) mapping, we used an existing genotypic dataset consisting of 36,901 SNPs, and the total root growth (TRG-RRG) Al tolerance phenotype generated on 373 O. sativa accessions over the course of this study. GWA mapping was conducted, using SNPs with a MAF.0.05, across all 373 genotypes as well as independently within the indica, aus, temperate japonica, and tropical japonica subpopulations (Figure 1). The Efficient Mixed-Model Association (EMMA) model was used in each analysis (both within and across subpopulations) to correct for confounding effects due to subpopulation structure and relatedness between individuals. As the subpopulation structure was highly correlated with Al tolerance, it was observed that analyzing all samples (373) together with the EMMA model resulted in an overcorrection (causing type 2 error) and a corresponding reduction in SNP significance. To address this problem, a PCA approach was also employed when analyzing all (373) samples together. However, the PCA approach resulted in a slight under-correction for population structure, demonstrating that results from each GWA method has limitations when used across all germplasm in this highly structured diversity panel.
  • We chose to further investigate the variation in and around the Nrat1 gene on chromosome 2 because multiple independent lines of evidence supported the existence of a gene(s) in this region responsible for a significant portion of the variation for Al tolerance in rice. Evidence included a strong GWA peak in the aus subpopulation, a previously reported QTL, and the localization of the Nrat1 Al transporter gene. Using the 44 K SNP data, LD in this region was calculated to be ,150 kb in the aus subpopulation and 11 distinct haplotypes were observed in the entire diversity panel across a 139 kb region around the Nrat1 gene(1.536 Mb–1.675 Mb on chr. 2) (Figure 2). Haplotype 1 (Hap.1), which was unique to the aus subpopulation, was found in 8 Al sensitive aus accessions and one Al sensitive aus/indica admixed line. These 9 genotypes were among the least Al tolerant (7 th percentile, mean RRG=0.16) of the 373 accessions screened. Haplotype 1 explained 40% of the phenotypic variation for Al tolerance within the aus subpopulation. In addition, four aus accessions that were highly or moderately Al tolerant were found to contain a tropical japonica introgression across this region (described in the section on Introgression analysis below).
Figure 2. Haplotype analysis of the Nrat1 gene region.

Labs working on this Project

  • Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America
  • Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America
  • Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture and Health, Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America

Corresponding Author

  • Susan R. McCouch(srm4@cornell.edu)