Genome-Wide Association Study of Genetic Control of Seed Fatty Acid Biosynthesis in Brassica napus

Abstract

Fatty acids and their composition in seeds determine oil value for nutritional or industrial purposes and also affect seed germination as well as seedling establishment. To better understand the genetic basis of seed fatty acid biosynthesis in oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.) we applied a genome-wide association study, using 91,205 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) characterized across a mapping population with high-resolution skim genotyping by sequencing (SkimGBS). We identified a cluster of loci on chromosome A05 associated with oleic and linoleic seed fatty acids. The delineated genomic region contained orthologs of the Arabidopsis thaliana genes known to play a role in regulation of seed fatty acid biosynthesis such as Fatty acyl-ACP thioesterase B (FATB) and Fatty Acid Desaturase (FAD5). This approach allowed us to identify potential functional genes regulating fatty acid composition in this important oil producing crop and demonstrates that this approach can be used as a powerful tool for dissecting complex traits for B. napus improvement programs.

Genome‐wide association study for frost tolerance in rapeseed/canola (Brassica napus) under simulating freezing conditions

“…Therefore, we took 100 kb sequence from each side of the significant marker for the candidate gene search (Chalhoub et al, ). Gacek et al () used 50 kb sequence for candidate gene search in Brassica napus , Xu et al () and Zhou et al () used 100 kb sequence, and Qu et al () used 200 kb sequence for mining candidate genes. NCBI‐BLAST was used to identify genes associated with frost tolerance or abiotic stress.…”

High-throughput genotyping for association mapping of agronomically important traits in rapeseed: a brief review of the current status

“…Loci associated with erucic acid content were present on chromosomes A8, A9, A10, C3, C8, C9 (Li et al, 2014;Havlickova et al, 2017;Qu et al, 2017). The markers associated with fatty acid content were shown to be located close to the genes encoding fatty acid elongases, 3-ketoacyl-CoA synthases, and fatty acid desaturases (Gacek et al, 2017;Qu et al, 2017). Using the associative transcriptomics approach, the ortholog of the VTE gene, which encodes tocopherol methyl transferase, was shown to determine tocopherol compositions (Havlickova et al, 2017).…”

Advances in Integrating Genomics and Bioinformatics in the Plant Breeding Pipeline

“…Association studies are more likely than QTL analysis to identify specific candidate genes that can be directly introgressed into crop germplasm to improve crops [72]. GWAS has been carried out in a variety of crops such as rice, soybean, maize, wheat and canola [73][74][75][76]. In Oryza sativa indica, 517 landraces were sequenced, identifying around 3.6 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) [73].…”