A large sequenced mutant library – valuable reverse genetic resource that covers 98% of sorghum genes
Yinping Jiao, Deepti Nigam, Kerrie Barry, Chris Daum, Yuko Yoshinaga, Anna Lipzen, Adil Khan, Sai‐Praneeth Parasa, Sharon Wei, Zhenyuan Lu, Marcela K. Tello‐Ruiz, Pallavi Dhiman, Gloria Burow, Chad Hayes, Junping Chen, Federica Brandizzi, Jenny Mortimer, Doreen Ware, Zhanguo Xin- Cell Biology
- Plant Science
- Genetics
SUMMARY
Mutant populations are crucial for functional genomics and discovering novel traits for crop breeding. Sorghum, a drought and heat‐tolerant C4 species, requires a vast, large‐scale, annotated, and sequenced mutant resource to enhance crop improvement through functional genomics research. Here, we report a sorghum large‐scale sequenced mutant population with 9.5 million ethyl methane sulfonate (EMS)‐induced mutations that covered 98% of sorghum's annotated genes using inbred line BTx623. Remarkably, a total of 610 320 mutations within the promoter and enhancer regions of 18 000 and 11 790 genes, respectively, can be leveraged for novel research of cis‐regulatory elements. A comparison of the distribution of mutations in the large‐scale mutant library and sorghum association panel (SAP) provides insights into the influence of selection. EMS‐induced mutations appeared to be random across different regions of the genome without significant enrichment in different sections of a gene, including the 5′ UTR, gene body, and 3′‐UTR. In contrast, there were low variation density in the coding and UTR regions in the SAP. Based on the Ka/Ks value, the mutant library (~1) experienced little selection, unlike the SAP (0.40), which has been strongly selected through breeding. All mutation data are publicly searchable through SorbMutDB (