Analysis of multiple Brassica transcriptomes reveals subgenome dominance in the response of Brassica napus to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum
Published in TBD, 2020
Allopolyploids are organisms which form due to the hybridization between two re- lated parental species, resulting in a whole-genome duplication. This phenomenon is particularly common among agronomically relevant plant species, partly due to the adaptive potential conferred through an influx of genetic material, and corre- spondingly, enhanced genetic diversity. However, these species must reconcile di- vergent parental transcriptomes, which can have profound consequences on global gene expression patterns — especially when confronted with environmental stres- sors. I used RNA-sequencing to investigate not only the response of Brassica na- pus to pathogen stress — elicited by the fungal necrotroph Sclerotinia sclerotio- rum — but also how this response manifested in its parental species, Brassica rapa and Brassica oleracea, and a resynthesized allopolyploid B. napus formed directly from these species. This allowed me to identify a distinct bias to towards the B. oleracea-derived genome in both polyploids, which consequentially influenced the defence response of B. napus.
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