No abstract

Latilactobacillus sakei is a lactic acid bacterium used to produce a wide range of fermented food products. To understand their characteristics and adaptability to various nutrient sources, we applied strain-specific, nucleotide-concatenated (SSC) sequences to the phylogenetic analysis of 32 L. sakei strains isolated from various locations and products. SSC sequences were developed by concatenating the polymorphisms detected by whole-genome sequencing. This enabled us to use sufficient polymorphisms and avoid the bias caused by selecting partial sequences, such as that in core genome and multi-locus sequence typing. SSC sequence-based analysis revealed that the phylogenetic relations for L. sakei are based on the different nutrition sources rather than geographical distance.

Controlling the timing of owering is key to improving yield and quality of several agricultural crops including the Brassicas. Many Brassicaceae plants possess a conserved owering mechanism in which FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) represses the transcription of owering activators, such as FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), during vernalization. Here, we employed genetic analysis based on next-generation sequencing to identify a dominate FT allele, BrFT2-C, for owering in the absence of vernalization in the Brassica rapa cultivar 'CHOY SUM EX CHINA 3'. BrFT2-C harbors two large insertions upstream of its coding region and is constitutively expressed without vernalization, despite FLCexpression. We show that BrFT2-C offers an opportunity to introduce owering without vernalization requirement into winter-type brassica crops, including B. napus, which have many functional FLC paralogs. Furthermore, we demonstrated the feasibility of using B. rapa harboring BrFT2-C as rootstock for grafting to induce owering in radish (Raphanus sativus), which requires vernalization for owering. We believe that the ability of BrFT2-C to overcome repression by FLCcan have signi cant applications in brassica crops breeding to increase yields by accelerating or delaying owering. Key MessageWe identi ed and characterized a dominant FT allele for owering without vernalization in Brassica rapa, while demonstrating its potential for deployment in breeding to accelerate owering in various Brassica species.

Controlling the flowering habit of strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) is important for extending its period of production and increasing yields. In strawberry, the single dominant Perpetual Flowering Runnering (PFRU) locus controls the perpetual flowering (PF) trait, as revealed using a traditional linkage analysis with DNA markers. Additional DNA markers for PFRU have been developed using the linkage map; however, they have only been applied to the limited cultivars showing polymorphisms. Furthermore, distinguishing between genotypes homozygous and heterozygous for PFRU is difficult because only the dominant markers were previously available. Here, we identified the PFRU locus by performing a genome-wide association study with whole-genome sequencing data and a publicly available reference genome and mapped the previously reported DNA marker onto a physical map of F. × ananassa. This accurate location for PFRU may facilitate the development of DNA markers that can be applied to various cultivars/lines, accelerating the breeding of PF-type strawberry cultivars and facilitating the isolation of the PFRU causal gene by further narrowing down the candidate region.

Controlling the timing of flowering is key to improving yield and quality of several agricultural crops including the Brassicas. Many Brassicaceae plants possess a conserved flowering mechanism in which FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) represses the transcription of flowering activators, such as FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), during vernalization. Here, we employed genetic analysis based on next-generation sequencing to identify a dominate FT allele, BrFT2-C, for flowering in the absence of vernalization in the Brassica rapa cultivar ‘CHOY SUM EX CHINA 3’. BrFT2-C harbors two large insertions upstream of its coding region and is constitutively expressed without vernalization, despite FLCexpression. We show that BrFT2-C offers an opportunity to introduce flowering without vernalization requirement into winter-type brassica crops, including B. napus, which have many functional FLC paralogs. Furthermore, we demonstrated the feasibility of using B. rapa harboring BrFT2-C as rootstock for grafting to induce flowering in radish (Raphanus sativus), which requires vernalization for flowering. We believe that the ability of BrFT2-C to overcome repression by FLCcan have significant applications in brassica crops breeding to increase yields by accelerating or delaying flowering.