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Duplicated, deleted and translocated VRN2 genes in hexaploid wheat

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Abstract

The vernalization gene VRN-2 in winter wheat cultivars prevents flowering during the winter season, but repression can be removed by low temperature (vernalization) and winter wheat cultivars thus flower in the following spring. VRN-2 was cloned from diploid wheat but its orthologues have not been characterized or utilized in hexaploid common wheat. In this study, VRN-2 was isolated from winter wheat cultivars Jagger and 2174 that were also used to generate a RIL population for genetic mapping. Neither VRN-A2 in genome A nor VRN-D2 in genome D showed allelic variation. Two duplicated copies of VRN-B2 were isolated from 2174, but no VRN-B2 was isolated from Jagger, indicating that Jagger carried a null VRN-B2 allele. Mapping of the VRN-B2 gene indicated that both VRN-B2 copies in 2174 were tightly linked with SNPs on chromosome 4BL, indicating that the duplicated VRN-B2 genes were arranged in a tandem pattern at the same locus. The Jagger null VRN-B2 allele had no significant effect on flowering time in the segregating population. Surprisingly, identical sequences of VRN-B2 were also found in contig sequences from chromosomes 4BS, 2BS, and 5DL in IWGSC Chinese Spring genome sequences. These findings suggest that multiple events of duplication, deletion, and translocation involving VRN-B2 may have occurred in various hexaploid wheat cultivars.

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Acknowledgments

This study was partially funded by the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station and the Oklahoma Wheat Research Foundation.

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  1. Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA

    ChorTee Tan & Liuling Yan

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  1. ChorTee Tan
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  2. Liuling Yan
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Correspondence to Liuling Yan.

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Tan, C., Yan, L. Duplicated, deleted and translocated VRN2 genes in hexaploid wheat. Euphytica 208, 277–284 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-015-1589-7

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