High-throughput physical map anchoring via BAC-pool sequencing

BACKGROUND

Physical maps created from large insert DNA libraries, typically cloned in BAC vector, are valuable resources for map-based cloning and de novo genome sequencing. The maps are most useful if contigs of overlapping DNA clones are anchored to chromosome(s), and ordered along them using molecular markers. Here we present a novel approach for anchoring physical maps, based on sequencing three-dimensional pools of BAC clones from minimum tilling path.

RESULTS

We used physical map of wheat chromosome arm 3DS to validate the method with two different DNA sequence datasets. The first comprised 567 genes ordered along the chromosome arm based on syntenic relationship of wheat with the sequenced genomes of Brachypodium, rice and sorghum. The second dataset consisted of 7,136 SNP-containing sequences, which were mapped genetically in Aegilops tauschii, the donor of the wheat D genome. Mapping of sequence reads from individual BAC pools to the first and the second datasets enabled unambiguous anchoring 447 and 311 3DS-specific sequences, respectively, or 758 in total.

CONCLUSIONS

We demonstrate the utility of the novel approach for BAC contig anchoring based on mass parallel sequencing of three-dimensional pools prepared from minimum tilling path of physical map. The existing genetic markers as well as any other DNA sequence could be mapped to BAC clones in a single in silico experiment. The approach reduces significantly the cost and time needed for anchoring and is applicable to any genomic project involving the construction of anchored physical map.

Sequence-based mapping of the polyploid wheat genome

The emergence of new sequencing technologies has provided fast and cost-efficient strategies for high-resolution mapping of complex genomes. Although these approaches hold great promise to accelerate genome analysis, their application in studying genetic variation in wheat has been hindered by the complexity of its polyploid genome. Here, we applied the next-generation sequencing of a wheat doubled-haploid mapping population for high-resolution gene mapping and tested its utility for ordering shotgun sequence contigs of a flow-sorted wheat chromosome. A bioinformatical pipeline was developed for reliable variant analysis of sequence data generated for polyploid wheat mapping populations. The results of variant mapping were consistent with the results obtained using the wheat 9000 SNP iSelect assay. A reference map of the wheat genome integrating 2740 gene-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms from the wheat iSelect assay, 1351 diversity array technology, 118 simple sequence repeat/sequence-tagged sites, and 416,856 genotyping-by-sequencing markers was developed. By analyzing the sequenced megabase-size regions of the wheat genome we showed that mapped markers are located within 40-100 kb from genes providing a possibility for high-resolution mapping at the level of a single gene. In our population, gene loci controlling a seed color phenotype cosegregated with 2459 markers including one that was located within the red seed color gene. We demonstrate that the high-density reference map presented here is a useful resource for gene mapping and linking physical and genetic maps of the wheat genome.