Artificial Selection Reveals Complex Genetic Architecture of Shoot Branching and Its Response to Nitrate Supply in Arabidopsis

Overview

Journal PLoS Genet

Specialty Genetics

Date 2023 Aug 24

PMID 37616321

Authors

Hugo Tavares

Anne Readshaw

Urszula Kania

Maaike de Jong

Raj K Pasam

Hayley McCulloch

Sally Ward

Liron Shenhav

Elizabeth Forsyth

Ottoline Leyser

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Quantitative traits may be controlled by many loci, many alleles at each locus, and subject to genotype-by-environment interactions, making them difficult to map. One example of such a complex trait is shoot branching in the model plant Arabidopsis, and its plasticity in response to nitrate. Here, we use artificial selection under contrasting nitrate supplies to dissect the genetic architecture of this complex trait, where loci identified by association mapping failed to explain heritability estimates. We found a consistent response to selection for high branching, with correlated responses in other traits such as plasticity and flowering time. Genome-wide scans for selection and simulations suggest that at least tens of loci control this trait, with a distinct genetic architecture between low and high nitrate treatments. While signals of selection could be detected in the populations selected for high branching on low nitrate, there was very little overlap in the regions selected in three independent populations. Thus the regulatory network controlling shoot branching can be tuned in different ways to give similar phenotypes.

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