Uncovering hidden variation in polyploid wheat

Comprehensive reverse genetic resources, which have been key to understanding gene function in diploid model organisms, are missing in many polyploid crops. Young polyploid species such as wheat, which was domesticated less than 10,000 y ago, have high levels of sequence identity among subgenomes that mask the effects of recessive alleles. Such redundancy reduces the probability of selection of favorable mutations during natural or human selection, but also allows wheat to tolerate high densities of induced mutations. Here we exploited this property to sequence and catalog more than 10 million mutations in the protein-coding regions of 2,735 mutant lines of tetraploid and hexaploid wheat. We detected, on…

• HH
  Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• GA
  Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

  Award: GBMF3031
• NI
  National Institute of Food and Agriculture

  Awards: 2012-67012-19811, 2011-68002-30029 & 2017-67007-25939
• BA
  Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

  Awards: BBS/E/C/00005202, BB/N016106/1, BB/J003557/1, BB/M014045/1, BB/M014045/1, BBS/E/J/000PR9789, BB/I000607/1, BBS/E/J/000PR9780, BB/J003557/1, BB/J004669/1, BBS/E/J/000PR8000, BB/N020413/1, BB/J003913/1, BB/I000712/1, BB/J003743/1, BB/J010375/1, BBS/E/T/000PR5885, BBS/E/T/000PR6193, BB/J003743/1, BB/J003913/1, BBS/E/J/000C0628