Abstract

The botanical family Cucurbitaceae includes a variety of fruit crops with global or local economic importance. How their genomes evolve and the genetic basis of diversity remain largely unexplored. In this study, we sequence the genome of the wax gourd (Benincasa hispida), which bears giant fruit up to 80 cm in length and weighing over 20 kg. Comparative analyses of six cucurbit genomes reveal that the wax gourd genome represents the most ancestral karyotype, with the predicted ancestral genome having 15 proto-chromosomes. We also resequence 146 lines of diverse germplasm and build a variation map consisting of 16 million variations. Combining population genetics and linkage mapping, we identify a number of regions/genes potentially selected during domestication and improvement, some of which likely contribute to the large fruit size in wax gourds. Our analyses of these data help to understand genome evolution and function in cucurbits.

Details

Title
The wax gourd genomes offer insights into the genetic diversity and ancestral cucurbit karyotype
Author
Xie, Dasen 1 ; Xu, Yuanchao 2 ; Wang, Jinpeng 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Liu, Wenrui 1 ; Zhou, Qian 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Luo, Shaobo 1 ; Huang, Wu 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; He, Xiaoming 1 ; Li, Qing 4 ; Peng, Qingwu 1 ; Yang, Xueyong 4 ; Yuan, Jiaqing 3 ; Yu, Jigao 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Wang, Xiyin 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Lucas, William J 5 ; Huang, Sanwen 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Jiang, Biao 1 ; Zhang, Zhonghua 7 

1  Guangdong Key Laboratory for New Technology Research of Vegetables, Vegetable Research Institute, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China 
2  Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops of the Ministry of Agriculture, Sino-Dutch Joint Laboratory of Horticultural Genomics, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China; Agricultural Genomic Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, China 
3  School of Life Sciences, North China University of Science and Technology, Tangshan, Hebei, China 
4  Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops of the Ministry of Agriculture, Sino-Dutch Joint Laboratory of Horticultural Genomics, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China 
5  Agricultural Genomic Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, China; Department of Plant Biology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA 
6  Agricultural Genomic Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, China 
7  Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops of the Ministry of Agriculture, Sino-Dutch Joint Laboratory of Horticultural Genomics, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China; College of Horticulture, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, China 
Pages
1-12
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Nov 2019
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13185-3
ProQuest document ID
2314540462
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.