Parentage of grapevine rootstock ‘Fercal’ finally elucidated

Using a set of 20 microsatellite markers, ‘B.C. n°1B’ (mother) and ‘31 Richter’ (father) were demonstrated to be the true parents of ‘Fercal’ rootstock. ‘333 Ecole de Montpellier’ was definitively excluded as the putative father. ‘B.C. n°1A’ and ‘B.C. n°1B’ were shown to be distinct genotypes. ‘Ugni blanc’, and not ‘Colombard’, was discovered to be the Vitis vinifera father of ‘B.C. n°1B’.

A fast and efficient protocol for small RNA extraction in Japanese plum and other Prunus species

Background: Small ribonucleic acids represent an important repertoire of mobile molecules that exert key roles in several cell processes including antiviral defense. Small RNA based repertoire includes both small interfering RNA (siRNA) and microRNA (miRNA) molecules. In the Prunus genus, sharka disease, caused by the Plum pox virus (PPV), first occurred on European plum ( Prunus domestica ) and then spread over among all species in this genus and thus classified as quarantine pathogen. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) was used for the study of siRNA/miRNA molecules; however, NGS relies on adequate extraction protocols. Currently, knowledge of PPV-Prunus interactions in terms of siRNA populations and miRNA species is still scarce, and siRNA/miRNA extraction protocols are limited to species such as peach, almond, and sweet cherry. Results: We describe a reliable procedure for siRNA/miRNA purification from Prunus salicina trees, in which previously used protocols did not allow adequate purification. The procedure was based on a combination of commercially available RNA purification kits and specific steps that yielded high quality purifications. The resulting molecules were adequate for library construction and NGS, leading to the development of a pipeline for analysis of both siRNAs and miRNAs in the PPV\u2013P. salicina interactions. Results showed that PPV infection led to altered siRNA profiles in Japanese plum as characterized by decreased 24-nt and increased 21- and 22-nt siRNAs. Infections showed miR164 and miR160 generation and increased miR166, miR171, miR168, miR319, miR157, and miR159. Conclusion:We propose this protocol as a reliable and reproducible small RNA isolation procedure for P. salicina and other Prunus species

Characterization of Polymorphic Microsatellites in the Giant Bulldog Ant, Myrmecia brevinoda and the Jumper Ant, M. pilosula

The ant genus Myrmecia Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) is endemic to Australia and New Caledonia, and has retained many biological traits that are considered to be basal in the family Formicidae. Here, a set of 16 dinucleotide microsatellite loci were studied that are polymorphic in at least one of the two species of the genus: the giant bulldog ant, M. brevinoda Forel, and the jumper ant, M. pilosula Smith; 13 are novel loci and 3 are loci previously published for the genus Nothomyrmecia Clark (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). In M. brevinoda, the total of 12 polymorphic microsatellites yielded a total of 125 alleles, ranging from 3 to 18 with an average of 10.42 per locus; the observed and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.4000 to 0.9000 and from 0.5413 to 0.9200, respectively. In M. pilosula, the 9 polymorphic loci yielded a total of 67 alleles, ranging from 3 to 12 with an average of 7.44 per locus; the observed and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.5625 to 0.9375 and from 0.4863 to 0.8711, respectively. Five loci were polymorphic in both target species. In addition, 15 out of the 16 loci were successfully amplified in M. pyriformis. These informative microsatellite loci provide a powerful tool for investigating the population and colony genetic structure of M. brevinoda and M. pilosula, and may also be applicable to a range of congeners considering the relatively distant phylogenetic relatedness between M. pilosula and the other two species within the genus Myrmecia

Vitamin D Receptor Controls Cell Stemness in Acute Myeloid Leukemia and in Normal Bone Marrow.

Vitamin D (VD) is a known differentiating agent, but the role of VD receptor (VDR) is still incompletely described in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), whose treatment is based mostly on antimitotic chemotherapy. Here, we present an unexpected role of VDR in normal hematopoiesis and in leukemogenesis. Limited VDR expression is associated with impaired myeloid progenitor differentiation and is a new prognostic factor in AML. In mice, the lack of Vdr results in increased numbers of hematopoietic and leukemia stem cells and quiescent hematopoietic stem cells. In addition, malignant transformation of Vdr-/- cells results in myeloid differentiation block and increases self-renewal. Vdr promoter is methylated in AML as in CD34+ cells, and demethylating agents induce VDR expression. Association of VDR agonists with hypomethylating agents promotes leukemia stem cell exhaustion and decreases tumor burden in AML mouse models. Thus, Vdr functions as a regulator of stem cell homeostasis and leukemic propagation

Identification of a major QTL for Xanthomonas arboricola pv. pruni resistance in apricot

Xanthomonas arboricola pv. pruni causes bacterial spot of stone fruit resulting in severe yield losses in apricot production systems. Present on all continents, the pathogen is regulated in Europe as a quarantine organism. Host resistance is an important component of integrated pest management; however, little work has been done describing resistance against X. arboricola pv. pruni. In this study, an apricot population derived from the cross “Harostar” × “Rouge de Mauves” was used to construct two parental genetic maps and to perform a quantitative trait locus analysis of resistance to X. arboricola pv. pruni. A population of 101 F1 individuals was inoculated twice for two consecutive years in a quarantine greenhouse with a mixture of bacterial strains, and disease incidence and resistance index data were collected. A major QTL for disease incidence and resistance index accounting respectively for 53 % (LOD score of 15.43) and 46 % (LOD score of 12.26) of the phenotypic variation was identified at the same position on linkage group 5 of “Rouge de Mauves.” Microsatellite marker UDAp-452 co-segregated with the resistance, and two flanking microsatellites, namely BPPCT037 and BPPCT038A, were identified. When dividing the population according to the alleles of UDAp-452, the subgroup with unfavorable allele had a disease incidence of 32.6 % whereas the group with favorable allele had a disease incidence of 21 %, leading to a reduction of 35.6 % in disease incidence. This study is a first step towards the marker-assisted breeding of new apricot varieties with an increased tolerance to X. arboricola pv. pruni

Mining and validating grape (Vitis L.) ESTs to develop EST-SSR markers for genotyping and mapping

Grape expressed sequence tags (ESTs) are a new resource for developing simple sequence repeat (SSR) functional markers for genotyping and genetic mapping. An integrated pipeline including several computational tools for SSR identification and functional annotation was developed to identify 6,447 EST-SSR sequences from a total collection of 215,609 grape ESTs retrieved from NCBI. The 6,447 EST-SSRs were further reduced to 1,701 non-redundant sequences via clustering analysis, and 1,037 of them were successfully designed with primer pairs flanking the SSR motifs. From them, 150 pairs of primers were randomly selected for PCR amplification, polymorphism and heterozygosity analysis in V. vinifera cvs. Riesling and Cabernet Sauvignon, and V. rotundifolia (muscadine grape) cvs. Summit and Noble, and 145 pairs of these primers yielded PCR products. Pairwise comparisons of loci between the parents Riesling and Cabernet Sauvignon showed that 72 were homozygous in both cultivars, while 70 loci were heterozygous in at least one cultivar of the two. Muscadine parents Noble and Summit had 90 homozygous SSR loci in both parents and contained 50 heterozygous loci in at least one of the two. These EST-SSR functional markers are a useful addition for grape genotyping and genome mapping

Identification of two novel powdery mildew resistance loci, Ren6 and Ren7, from the wild Chinese grape species Vitis piasezkii

Descriptive statistics of the phenotypic scores within the base mapping population 11-373. Powdery mildew symptoms in the field were evaluated in two subsequent years. Greenhouse, in vitro experiments and the qPCR-based molecular assay were carried out with three to four biological replicates of each seedling plant in 2014. (DOCX 14ย�kb

Construction of an almond linkage map in an Australian population Nonpareil × Lauranne

Background: Despite a high genetic similarity to peach, almonds (Prunus dulcis) have a fleshless fruit and edible kernel, produced as a crop for human consumption. While the release of peach genome v1.0 provides an excellent opportunity for almond genetic and genomic studies, well-assessed segregating populations and the respective saturated genetic linkage maps lay the foundation for such studies to be completed in almond. Results: Using an almond intraspecific cross between ‘Nonpareil’ and ‘Lauranne’ (N × L), we constructed a moderately saturated map with SSRs, SNPs, ISSRs and RAPDs. The N × L map covered 591.4 cM of the genome with 157 loci. The average marker distance of the map was 4.0 cM. The map displayed high synteny and colinearity with the Prunus T × E reference map in all eight linkage groups (G1-G8). The positions of 14 mapped gene-anchored SNPs corresponded approximately with the positions of homologous sequences in the peach genome v1.0. Analysis of Mendelian segregation ratios showed that 17.9% of markers had significantly skewed genotype ratios at the level of P < 0.05. Due to the large number of skewed markers in the linkage group 7, the potential existence of deleterious gene(s) was assessed in the group. Integrated maps produced by two different mapping methods using JoinMap® 3 were compared, and their high degree of similarity was evident despite the positional inconsistency of a few markers. Conclusions: We presented a moderately saturated Australian almond map, which is highly syntenic and collinear with the Prunus reference map and peach genome V1.0. Therefore, the well-assessed almond population reported here can be used to investigate the traits of interest under Australian growing conditions, and provides more information on the almond genome for the international community.Iraj Tavassolian, Gholmereza Rabiei, Davina Gregory, Mourad Mnejja, Michelle G Wirthensohn, Peter W Hunt, John P Gibson, Christopher M Ford, Margaret Sedgley, and Shu-Biao W

Development and evaluation of a 9K SNP array for peach by internationally coordinated SNP detection and validation in breeding germplasm

Although a large number of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers covering the entire genome are needed to enable molecular breeding efforts such as genome wide association studies, fine mapping, genomic selection and marker-assisted selection in peach [Prunus persica (L.) Batsch] and related Prunus species, only a limited number of genetic markers, including simple sequence repeats (SSRs), have been available to date. To address this need, an international consortium (The International Peach SNP Consortium; IPSC) has pursued a coordinated effort to perform genome-scale SNP discovery in peach using next generation sequencing platforms to develop and characterize a high-throughput Illumina Infinium® SNP genotyping array platform. We performed whole genome re-sequencing of 56 peach breeding accessions using the Illumina and Roche/454 sequencing technologies. Polymorphism detection algorithms identified a total of 1,022,354 SNPs. Validation with the Illumina GoldenGate® assay was performed on a subset of the predicted SNPs, verifying ∼75% of genic (exonic and intronic) SNPs, whereas only about a third of intergenic SNPs were verified. Conservative filtering was applied to arrive at a set of 8,144 SNPs that were included on the IPSC peach SNP array v1, distributed over all eight peach chromosomes with an average spacing of 26.7 kb between SNPs. Use of this platform to screen a total of 709 accessions of peach in two separate evaluation panels identified a total of 6,869 (84.3%) polymorphic SNPs.The almost 7,000 SNPs verified as polymorphic through extensive empirical evaluation represent an excellent source of markers for future studies in genetic relatedness, genetic mapping, and dissecting the genetic architecture of complex agricultural traits. The IPSC peach SNP array v1 is commercially available and we expect that it will be used worldwide for genetic studies in peach and related stone fruit and nut species