Deleterious Mutation Burden and Its Association with Complex Traits in Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor)

Valluru, Ravi, Gazave, Elodie E., Fernandes, Samuel B. , Ferguson, John N., Lozano, Roberto, Hirannaiah, Pradeep, Zuo, Tao, Brown, Patrick J., Leakey, Andrew D. B., Gore, Michael A., Buckler, Edward S. and Bandillo, Nonoy (2019) Deleterious Mutation Burden and Its Association with Complex Traits in Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). Genetics, 211 (3). pp. 1075-1087. ISSN 0016-6731

Full content URL: https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.118.301742

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Deleterious Mutation Burden and Its Association with Complex Traits in Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor)
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Abstract

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) is a major food cereal for millions of people worldwide. The sorghum genome, like other species, accumulates deleterious mutations, likely impacting its fitness. The lack of recombination, drift, and the coupling with favorable loci impede the removal of deleterious mutations from the genome by selection. To study how deleterious variants impact phenotypes, we identified putative deleterious mutations among ∼5.5 M segregating variants of 229 diverse biomass sorghum lines. We provide the whole-genome estimate of the deleterious burden in sorghum, showing that ∼33% of nonsynonymous substitutions are putatively deleterious. The pattern of mutation burden varies appreciably among racial groups. Across racial groups, the mutation burden correlated negatively with biomass, plant height, specific leaf area (SLA), and tissue starch content (TSC), suggesting that deleterious burden decreases trait fitness. Putatively deleterious variants explain roughly one-half of the genetic variance. However, there is only moderate improvement in total heritable variance explained for biomass (7.6%) and plant height (average of 3.1% across all stages). There is no advantage in total heritable variance for SLA and TSC. The contribution of putatively deleterious variants to phenotypic diversity therefore appears to be dependent on the genetic architecture of traits. Overall, these results suggest that incorporating putatively deleterious variants into genomic models slightly improves prediction accuracy because of extensive linkage. Knowledge of deleterious variants could be leveraged for sorghum breeding through either genome editing and/or conventional breeding that focuses on the selection of progeny with fewer deleterious alleles.

Keywords:sorghum, deleterious mutations, trait fitness, genome-wide predictions
Subjects:D Veterinary Sciences, Agriculture and related subjects > D400 Agriculture
Divisions:College of Science > Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology
ID Code:42749
Deposited On:27 Oct 2020 11:56

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