Retrieve rice \"ancestor\" gene
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Helps to develop better rice varieties
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Rapid domestication of allotetraploid wild rice, taking advantage of polyploid, recovering some of the outstanding genes that have been lost in current cultivated rice, and breeding a new rice crop with higher yield and stronger environmental adaptability -- this breakthrough was achieved by Li Jiayyang's team and collaborators at the Institute of Seed Innovation and the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It was published in the internationally renowned academic journal Cell on February 4.
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Polyploidy is an important mechanism of plant evolution. The cultivated rice we grow today has been artificially domesticated for thousands of years, and its agronomic traits have been continuously improved, but at the same time, a lot of genetic diversity has been lost, resulting in the loss of dominant gene resources. Allotetraploid rice has two more chromosomes than diploid rice, and allotetraploid wild rice has the advantages of large biomass, native hybrid, and strong adaptability to the environment. However, its non-domestication characteristics also make it unable to be directly applied to agricultural production.
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Starting from tetraploid wild rice with better comprehensive performance, Li Jiayang's team used modern genome editing technology to \"repeat\" the rice domestication history of thousands to thousands of years in a short period of time, and avoided partial gene loss. For the first time, they designed and completed the framework of rapid de nio domestication of allotetraploid wild rice, which is expected to breed a new rice crop with high yield and strong environmental adaptability. The research team broke through the technical bottlenecks of genome analysis, efficient genetic transformation, and efficient genome editing, and annotated a series of domestication genes and important agronomic traits in the genome of heterotetraploid tall straw rice. A variety of genome-edited allotetraploid wild rice materials were successfully created, which showed lower grain dropping, shorter awns, lower plant height, longer grain length, thicker stalk and shorter heading time.