A next generation of studies: Heterosis and inbreeding depression

摘要: Heterosis or hybrid vigor is a phenomenon in which the F1 progeny superior characteristics than its inbred parents. Inbreeding depression refers to reduced offspring from matings involving related The world’s most important grain crop, Zea mays exhibits significant heterosis and inbreeding depression, despite billions of dollars sales investments maize, underlying molecular genetic mechanisms responsible for still remain unknown. We used next generation sequencing technologies sample elite publicly available germplasm explore role gene expression hybrids vs. inbreds. A comparison transcript counts parents their revealed additive action be prevalent among differentially expressed genes. Gene that deviated additivity showed high parent dominance, suggesting alleles affected more low parent. Most genes were inconsistent families, however at higher level organization these sets belonged same metabolic pathways up-regulated different hybrids, indicating organisms often utilize compensatory/complementary networks perform task. Allele-specific analysis all inbred-hybrid combinations majority preferentially also between Cis-trans statistical tests although exhibit conserved expression, cis-regulation was found affect trans-regulation. Cis regulation strongly correlated with identified