Genome-wide association study in plants
Agriculture has been one of the most promising and crucial industries in the world acting as a provider of food, fabric, and much more. To keep up the success of this industry, knowing about traits important to agriculture is of utmost requirement. Further, such traits are a result of the plant's genetic loci as well as their interactions with the surrounding environment. One such promising way of identifying the traits from the species genome is the method of “GWAS”. It is mostly the technological advancement in the genomics area which created an utmost desire to explore the trait variation among different genomes.
The extensive applications of this technology can be seen in the identification of crucial genes controlling complex traits. These genes are mostly involved in the regulation of traits such as plant height, metabolic processes, etc. Another such area of its application is in plant breeding. Industries have also been set up around the world providing such services for plant breeding.
GWAS studies the associations of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) present in a genome to those of the phenotypic traits. Plant breeding has been performed in some of the crops such as maize, millet, sorghum, and rice mostly for improving their desirable traits.
Other major crops include wheat and barley, whose economically important traits are indispensable to meet the high demands of food amongst the world population. In rice, Genome-wide association studies have led to the identification of genes associated with the divergence of the species geographically. Also, the genes involved in the process of adaptation when rice species are domesticated have been identified. The successful development of a transgenic species of maize (drought-tolerant) has shown the wide applicability of GWAS in Genetic engineering also. Identification of such target genes is expected to increase with the applicability of this method .
Classical methods of plant breeding are mostly costly, slow, and sometimes destructive. Further, the knowledge of the molecular mechanisms of the plants is of high importance for identifying markers associated with any desired traits. Along with the adaptation a plant undergoes under different physiological conditions, it becomes a necessity to understand the genetic makeup of the species for marker identification. Here comes the application of molecular techniques such as whole genome sequencing of the plant species. Thus the demand for a cost-effective high throughput sequencing technique increases leading to the development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms generating millions of sequences. These astonishing achievements in sequencing have provided tools to study the gene networks thereby identifying markers related to traits such as drought resistance etc.
The technique of GWAS has been fuelled through the advancement in genomics and sequencing areas enabling the scientific community to explore the diverse genetic material to identify the specific variants across the species. It is through the availability of reference genomes that assists in the genetic characterization of important crops and plants. However, although GWAS has proved to be useful in studying the associations, advanced mathematical and statistical methods are required to identify those phenotypes associated with genetic markers.
Reference:
1.https://www.lifeasible.com/custom-solutions/plant/plant-breeding/genome-wide-association-study-gwas-for-plant-breeding/
- https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tpg2.20077
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1878818120312834