Abstract
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The mutant that originally defined the shrunken - 2 locus of maize is shown here to be the product of a complex chromosomal rearrangement.
Abstract
The maize shrunken-2 gene (sh2) encodes the large subunit of the heterotetrameric enzyme, adenosine diphosphate glucose pyrophosphorylases and a rate-limiting enzyme in starch biosynthesis. The sh2 gene was defined approximately 72 years ago by the isolation of a loss-of-function allele conditioning a shrunken, but viable seed. In subsequent years, the realization that this allele, termed zsh2-R or sh2-Reference, causes an extremely high level of sucrose to accumulate in the developing seed led to a revolution in the sweet corn industry. Now, the vast majority of sweet corns grown throughout the world contain this mutant allele. Through initial Southern analysis followed by genomic sequencing, the work reported here shows that this allele arose through a complex set of events involving at least three breaks of chromosome 3 as well as an intra-chromosomal inversion. These findings provide an explanation for some previously reported, unexpected observations concerning rates of recombination within and between genes in this region.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Lisa Coffey and Pat Schnable for furnishing seeds of the sweet corn ‘Sweet Belle’ and Susan Boehlein and Brandon Futch for assistance in manuscript preparation. We thank Ed Coe for sharing his insight into recombination in this region of chromosome 3. Work at the University of Florida was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (IBM 0444031 and IOS 0815104) and the USDA Competitive Grants Program (2006-35100-17220, and 2008-35318-18649) and from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (2010-04228).
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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The experiments in this study comply with the current laws of the USA.
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Communicated by Natalia de Leon.
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Kramer, V., Shaw, J.R., Senior, M.L. et al. The sh2-R allele of the maize shrunken-2 locus was caused by a complex chromosomal rearrangement. Theor Appl Genet 128, 445–452 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-014-2443-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-014-2443-3