research-highlights

Inadvertent Introgression: Pleiotropy and the Sorghum Genome

Mural et al. analyzed existing trait datasets and found evidence for the presence of previously unknown pleiotropic genes in the sorghum genome.

QTL Identified for Source-Sink Relationships in a Bi-Parental Recombinant Inbred Line Population

Sorghum grown under favorable conditions has high production potential. Photoassimilate production at the source (leaf) and transport to the sink (grain) are primary determinants of the yield. Mapping Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) for source-sink relationships is of interest to biologists

An improved high-resolution method for the in silico detection of EMS-induced mutations in sorghum mutant populations

Improved detection of point mutations in an EMS-mutagenized sorghum population by subtracting false negative variants.

Gene Expression affecting dhurrin production in domesticated Sorghum bicolor versus Australian wild Sorghum macrospermum

Ananda et al. identified genes key to dhurrin synthesis that were highly expressed in S. bicolor, opening up the opportunity to introgress traits from S. macrospermum into domesticated species to create acyanogenic, livestock safe sorghum lines.

Diversity in the Sorghum Pan-Genome Could Contribute to Crop Improvement

Tao et al, assembled 13 wild and domesticated sorghum genomes, performed a pan-genome analysis of 44,079 gene families, and identified widespread presence/absence variation within 64% of gene families.

Comparative Analysis of Deleterious Mutations in Sorghum versus Maize

Lozano et al. performed whole-genome resequencing to analyze approximately 13 million variants from 499 sorghum lines, compared the genetic variants with 25 million variants previously identified among 1,218 maize lines, and found that while maize analysis results were in line with the domestication-cost hypothesis, sorghum’s were not.