Unraveling the Evolutionary Process of Pasta Wheat vs. Bread Wheat

October 21, 2024

Utilizing genetic functional diversity for developing new varieties

The durum wheat (pasta wheat; tetraploid) emerged from the combination of chromosome sets of two different diploid wheat, while bread wheat (hexaploid) emerged from the combination of durum wheat with another diploid wheat. The event of chromosome sets combining is called allopolyploidization. When this event occurs, the number of genes in a single cell increases significantly, leading to a functional diversity of genes that serves as a driving force for evolution. A joint research team of the RIKEN CSRS and Yokohama City University Kihara Institute for Biological Research have compared the genes of durum wheat and bread wheat. They found that the first and second allopolyploidization events had different impacts on subsequent genetic functional diversity.

Recently, genome information on durum wheat, bread wheat, and three other spices of wheat involved in their allopolyploidization has been unrevealed. This research team focused on the allopolyploidization events of durum and bread wheat and investigated the differences between the first and second events. Then, they found that the first allopolyploidization caused more significant changes in gene function, and the genes that underwent functional changes differed between the two events.

This outcome is expected to provide important insights into techniques for utilizing functional divergences of higher-order polyploids to develop new varieties.

Original article

The Plant Journal doi: 10.1111/tpj.17047

A. Ezoe, D. Todaka, Y. Utsumi, S. Takahashi, K. Kawaura, M. Seki,

"Decrease in Purifying Selection Pressures on Wheat Homoeologous Genes: Tetraploidization vs Hexaploidization".

Contact

Akihiro Ezoe; Special Postdoctoral Researcher
Motoaki Seki; Team Leader
Plant Genomic Network Research Team