|
|
||||||||
a USDA-ARS, Crop Germplasm Research Unit, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX 77845
b Institute for Genomic Diversity, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY 14853
c Dep. of Ecology, Evolution, & Organismal Biology, Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA 50011
d Dep. of Agronomy, Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA 50011
* Corresponding author (lhinze{at}cgru.usda.gov)
| ABSTRACT |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Abbreviations: CB, Iowa Corn Borer Synthetic #1 RRS, reciprocal recurrent selection SS, Iowa Stiff Stalk Synthetic SSR, simple sequence repeat
| INTRODUCTION |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Labate et al. (1997) evaluated several measures of genetic diversity of the progenitors and 100 plants each from Cycle 0 and Cycle 12 in both populations using 82 restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) markers. Gene diversity (expected heterozygosity) and average number of alleles per locus decreased in both populations. Nei's (1978) unbiased genetic distance between populations increased from the progenitors to Cycle 0 and from Cycle 0 to Cycle 12. The progenitors of both populations were closely related (Nei's genetic distance = 0.07). Over time, the distance between the populations continued to increase (Cycle 0, Nei's genetic distance = 0.21; Cycle 12, Nei's genetic distance = 0.66). The genetic distance between the progenitors and Cycle 0 of CB was approximately zero (Nei's genetic distance = 0.02), while the same comparison in SS was larger (Nei's genetic distance = 0.13). Most loci did meet the expectation of random mating or, more specifically, independence of occurrence of pairs of alleles under Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Excess homozygosity was commonly a factor in deviations from random mating. The tendency to intermate plants with similar flowering times increases the chances of homozygosity (Labate et al., 2000).
The objective of this research was to answer questions remaining as a result of the work that has been reported previously (Labate et al., 1997, 2000). Our approach was to obtain a more thorough molecular characterization of the RRS program between CB and SS by evaluating an increased number of cycles of selection in each population using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. We wanted to see if a smaller sample size is adequate to characterize these populations, to observe the variations in allele frequency that occur in intermediate time points, to see if additional information could be gained from SSR versus RFLP analysis, and to more rapidly perform the laboratory procedures. The main questions we were interested in answering were (i) how has allelic diversity, measured with microsatellites, changed over time in the populations and (ii) has reciprocal recurrent selection changed the population structure or the relationships between the populations and among the cycles?
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Reciprocal recurrent selection is a method of interpopulation improvement proposed by Comstock et al. (1949) to take advantage of both additive and nonadditive genetic effects for traits under selection. A detailed outline of the selection procedure in CB and SS from formation of the populations through Cycle 5 is found in Penny and Eberhart (1971). Keeratinijakal and Lamkey (1993) provided a description of the program from Cycle 6 through Cycle 11. The selection methodology has not changed from Cycle 11 to Cycle 15.
Microsatellite Genotyping
Thirty plants were randomly selected from seven cycles of selection (Cycles 0, 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15) in both CB and SS. A single plant of each of the 28 progenitor lines was sampled to give a total of 448 plants genotyped. After about 2 wk growth in a greenhouse, a 5-cm lengthwise section of a single leaf with the midrib removed was collected from all plants and stored at 80°C until extraction. Genomic DNA was extracted from leaf samples via a CTAB (cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide) miniprep protocol (Mitchell et al., 1997), keeping the DNA from each plant separate.
One hundred five SSRs were chosen for analysis on the basis of presence of polymorphism among the progenitor lines and their coverage of the maize genome (Table S1, which is published as supporting information on the Crop Science website). After analysis, 19 SSRs were discarded because of low amplification or ambiguous results. SSR primers were fluorescently labeled and multiplexed before the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Multiplex PCR was performed in 20-µL volumes containing 25-ng template DNA for samples of the progenitors and CB cycles and 7.5-ng template DNA for samples of SS cycles. The remainder of the volume contained 1x PCR buffer, 1.5 mM MgCl2, 0.2 mM dNTPs, 1 U Taq polymerase, and 4 pmoles of each forward and reverse primer in the multiplex set. The PCR protocol began with a denaturing step at 95°C for 4 min; followed by 30 cycles of 95°C for 1 min (denature), 55°C for 2 min (anneal), and 72°C for 2 min (extend), and ended with a final extension step at 72°C for 1 h.
Following this amplification, 0.1-µL GENESCAN 500XL size standard (PE Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA) and 1.0-µL loading buffer were added to 0.5 µL of each PCR product. The samples were denatured at 95°C for 5 min and placed on ice. A multichannel syringe was used to load 0.5 µL of each sample into 96-well 5% (w/v) polyacrylamide gels. During electrophoresis by an automated DNA sequencer (PE Applied Biosystems, model 377), GENESCAN 3.1 software (PE Applied Biosystems) recorded the fragment sizes in base pairs for both the PCR products and the internal size standard as they migrated through the gel. If no amplification product was seen in the gel image, PCR was rerun for that particular plant DNASSR primer combination. GENOTYPER 2.1 software (PE Applied Biosystems) combined size and fluorescence information to identify the different markers and their specific allelic products. All data were verified for accuracy. Alleles at each SSR locus were then "binned" on the basis of natural breaks in the distribution of allele sizes (Matsuoka et al., 2002). When this criterion was not met, additional criteria such as observed heterozygotes were used to identify bins. Binning was performed for all loci because alleles did not tend to follow a discrete, stepwise distribution pattern on the basis of repeat sizes.
Statistical Analysis
Diversity of the SSR markers and genetic variability within each cycle and population were calculated by PopGene (Yeh and Boyle, 1997) as the number of polymorphic loci, average number of alleles per locus, and expected mean heterozygosity. Differences among cycles within populations and between populations were tested with linear regressions of diversity estimates by SAS Proc GLM. We identified unique alleles (those that appear only once) in the progenitors and traced the fate of those alleles through Cycle 15. Likelihood-ratio G tests (Sokal and Rohlf, 1995) in PopGene were used to adjust for the effects of markers that are linked together on chromosomes (nonindependent markers) and detect significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE).
Genetic distances were estimated from Nei's unbiased measure (Nei, 1978) in PopGene to account for small sample sizes. Relationships among maize populations were evaluated by principal component analysis (PCA) of the variance-covariance matrix of genotype data in NTSYSpc (Rohlf, 2000). Since allele frequencies within loci and populations sum to zero, the original genotypic data matrix contains many linear dependencies. These dependencies were removed without loss of information for the PCA by dropping one allele at each locus (Smouse et al., 1982).
Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA; Excoffier et al., 1992) was performed by Arlequin (Schneider et al., 2000) to detect differences in the distribution of multilocus genotypes with respect to the following patterns of variation: among populations, among groups within populations, and among plants within groups. The sources of variation include two populations (i.e., CB and SS), eight groups (i.e., progenitors and Cycles 0, 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15), and 448 plants that represent the total sample.
AMOVA was performed to evaluate variation in multilocus genotypes between and within the two populations for each of the eight groups. The test statistics of this analysis are composites of the expected mean squares associated with each source of variation (hierarchical level; Excoffier et al., 1992). They are indirectly related to each source.
CT = correlation among random SSR genotypes within populations (C) relative to the correlation of random pairs drawn from the total sample (T);
SC = correlation among random SSR genotypes within groups (S) relative to the correlation of random pairs drawn from the respective populations;
ST = correlation among random SSR genotypes within groups relative to the correlation of random pairs drawn from the total sample.
These
statistics are similar to the F coefficients (e.g., FST) proposed by Wright (1951), commonly used to estimate the amount of differentiation in population subdivisions. However, the
statistics were calculated by a multivariate method from geometric distances rather than a univariate method of deviations from an average (Excoffier, 2001). The null distribution was determined from 1000 permutations of all possible distance measures across the different hierarchical levels. The significance of the
statistic was determined by measuring the difference between itself and the null distribution (Excoffier et al., 1992).
| RESULTS AND DISCUSSION |
|---|
|
|
|---|
|
The percent of loci deviating from HWE tended to decrease from Cycle 0 to Cycle 15 within both populations (Fig. 2) . Fewer loci deviate from HWE over time because more loci become fixed as the RRS program progresses. This decrease is significant across the SS cycles (P = 0.03) but nonsignificant across the CB cycles (P = 0.12). The deviations from HWE were in the direction of excess homozygosity. A potential source of homozygosity is assortative mating. Assortative mating is a type of non-random mating that occurred when crosses were made on the basis of pollination and silking synchrony (i.e., among early lines and among late lines; Labate et al., 2000). Homozygosity could also increase because of null alleles. Null alleles are those which are present but do not amplify (Hedrick, 2000); therefore, a heterozygote may appear as a homozygote or an entire genotype may be missing after PCR analysis. This would result in a higher apparent frequency of homozygotes and possibly entire genotypic classes missing from the data. Any of these factors (i.e., assortative mating or genotyping errors) may have caused the observed deviations from HWE.
|
We observed an increase in genetic distance (GD) between populations with each subsequent cycle and an increase in GD from the progenitors at each cycle in both populations (Table 1). By Cycle 15, CB and SS diverged further from each other (GD = 0.6286) than either of the Cycle 15 populations had diverged from their respective progenitors (CB, GD = 0.2446; SS, GD = 0.3389). The genetic distance between progenitors and Cycle 0 in the SS population (Table 1; GD = 0.1235) was larger than the same interval in CB (GD = 0.0406). Labate et al. (1997) observed a similar spread between SS progenitors and Cycle 0 (GD = 0.13). There was no intentional selection between the PR and Cycle 0; therefore, drift is the most likely explanation. However, natural selection during maintenance or contamination could have also contributed to the observed differences in genetic distance.
|
Genetic Structure
In the PCA, the first two principal components (PCs) explained 44 and 13% of the total variation, respectively (Fig. 3)
. The first PC separated plants on the basis of groups while the second PC separated the CB from the SS population. Plants from the cycles of selection generally separated into their respective CB or SS population. Plants within individual CB cycles tended to be more similar, therefore grouping together, while SS plants were inclined to overlap more with plants of neighboring and non-neighboring groups. There was no difference in the mating designs for the CB and SS populations to explain this pattern. Therefore, the difference could be due to a greater resolution of the genetic diversity in CB given the larger number of polymorphic loci in CB present for analysis. Alternatively, this pattern could be due to the breeding and selection program applied to these two populations. The progenitors were highly polymorphic at the SSR loci studied yet were very close to one another in terms of genetic distance (GD = 0.0845). As the RRS program began testing the CB and SS populations against one another, the effects of selecting the highest yielding intercross progeny from the two populations are seen. The RRS program resulted in selection of different alleles in the CB and SS populations. While the progenitors may have had alleles in common, selection during the RRS program decreased the genetic similarity between the two populations while increasing similarity within them. The frequency of the SSR alleles should only be changing by drift unless the allele is located in a selected gene or is hitchhiking with a selected gene. In Labate et al. (2000), 25% of SSRs showed linkage disequilibrium, thus indicating the SSRs are not behaving in a selectively neutral manner. In a subsequent manuscript, we are evaluating the neutrality of SSR loci and testing whether divergence of the populations is due to selection, genetic drift, or a combination of both.
|
ST = 0.3375, P < 0.001; Table 2). Under the analysis, 66% of the variance was explained by within group variation, while 21% of the total variance was partitioned between the CB and SS populations. The amount of variation found among groups within populations was the smallest (13%) of the three sources of variation. We observed more variation for individual groups than for populations when determining structure in this collection of maize germplasm. In addition to testing the structure of the total sample, we partitioned the sample into the eight groups and used AMOVA to analyze each separately. With this approach, there are two levels, between and within populations, used to describe the variance distribution. Estimates of between population variance increased from 4% in the progenitors to 58% in Cycle 15 (Table 3) with a complementary decrease in variation within populations over time. These results supplement our previous estimates of genetic diversity showing how allelic variation has changed in these populations.
|
|
Since different types of markers were used, our results and the results of Labate et al. (1997) do not allow for a direct comparison because the marker systems themselves could cause some of the observed differences. However, this research complements the work of Labate et al. (1997) and presents more evidence regarding the number of plants necessary for diversity studies. We obtained comparable results at the time points in common to the two studies (progenitors, Cycles 0 and 12), suggesting that our sample size of 30, rather than Labate et al.'s (1997) 100, would be adequate for characterizing cycles of selection within these populations. Labate et al. (1997) did show higher estimates for average number of alleles per locus, expected heterozygosity (gene diversity), heterozygous plants, and unique alleles when compared with our data. In addition to possible differences because of marker type, these higher values from the RFLP data could also reflect the power of a larger sample size in identifying less common alleles. Using our current strategy, we were able to sample more time points in the RRS program and obtain additional information on the molecular changes that had occurred.
This RRS program has created a distinct structure within and between CB and SS populations. Our analyses confirm that the partitioning of variance in this breeding program has changed over time. The progenitor lines were highly variable. As time passed, some of that variation moved from within each cycle to between respective cycles in each population. This repartitioning of the variance could explain why phenotypic studies have observed a decrease in variance of these populations over time (Holthaus and Lamkey, 1995). Adding to our knowledge of these populations allows us to better evaluate how a plant breeding strategy that has been in practice for over 50 yr has and continues to affect molecular genetic variation.
| NOTES |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Received for publication November 16, 2004.
| REFERENCES |
|---|
|
|
|---|
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
B. T. Campbell, D. T. Bowman, and D. B. Weaver Heterotic Effects in Topcrosses of Modern and Obsolete Cotton Cultivars Crop Sci., March 19, 2008; 48(2): 593 - 600. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
B. M. Wardyn, J. W. Edwards, and K. R. Lamkey The Genetic Structure of a Maize Population: The Role of Dominance Crop Sci., March 1, 2007; 47(2): 467 - 474. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| The SCI Journals | Agronomy Journal | Vadose Zone Journal | |||
| Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education |
Soil Science Society of America Journal | ||||
| Journal of Plant Registrations | Journal of Environmental Quality |
The Plant Genome | |||