A Genomic Variation Map Provides Insights into the Genetic Basis of Cucumber Domestication and Diversity

Overview

Journal Nat Genet

Specialty Genetics

Date 2013 Oct 22

PMID 24141363

Citations 215

Authors

Jianjian Qi

Xin Liu

Di Shen

Han Miao

Bingyan Xie

Xixiang Li

Peng Zeng

Shenhao Wang

Yi Shang

Xingfang Gu

Yongchen Du

Ying Li

Tao Lin

Jinhong Yuan

Xueyong Yang

Jinfeng Chen

Huiming Chen

Xingyao Xiong

Ke Huang

Zhangjun Fei

Linyong Mao

Li Tian

Thomas Stadler

Susanne S Renner

Sophien Kamoun

William J Lucas

Zhonghua Zhang

Sanwen Huang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Most fruits in our daily diet are the products of domestication and breeding. Here we report a map of genome variation for a major fruit that encompasses ~3.6 million variants, generated by deep resequencing of 115 cucumber lines sampled from 3,342 accessions worldwide. Comparative analysis suggests that fruit crops underwent narrower bottlenecks during domestication than grain crops. We identified 112 putative domestication sweeps; 1 of these regions contains a gene involved in the loss of bitterness in fruits, an essential domestication trait of cucumber. We also investigated the genomic basis of divergence among the cultivated populations and discovered a natural genetic variant in a β-carotene hydroxylase gene that could be used to breed cucumbers with enhanced nutritional value. The genomic history of cucumber evolution uncovered here provides the basis for future genomics-enabled breeding.

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