Juansheng Ren^1* , Yuchao Yu^1,2* , Fangyuan Gao¹ , Lihua Zeng² , Xianjun Lu¹ , Xianting Wu¹ , Wengui Yan³ , Guangjun Ren¹

1. Crop Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chengdu, 610066, P.R. China
2. Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, 610066, P.R. China
3. Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center, United States Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service(USDA-ARS), 2890 Highway 130 East, Stuttgart, AR 72160, USA
* The authors contributed equally to the work
Author    Correspondence author
Rice Genomics and Genetics, 2012, Vol. 3, No. 1   doi: 10.5376/rgg.2012.03.0001
Received: 16 Dec., 2011    Accepted: 17 Jan., 2012    Published: 20 Jan., 2012

This article was first published in Molecular Plant Breeding in Chinese, and here was authorized to translate and publish the paper in English under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Ren et al., 2012, Analysis of Genetic Structure in the USDA Rice Mini-Core Collection Using the SQUAMOSA Promoter-binding-like Gene Family, Rice Genomics and Genetics, Vol.3, No.1, 1-7 (doi: 10.5376/rgg.2012.03.0001)

The SQUAMOSA (SQUA) promoter-binding-like (SPL) gene family is a plant specific transcription factor family and has many important biological functions. In this study, 19 pairs of primers were designed based on 19 Oryza sativa L. SQUAMOSA promoter-binding-like (OsSPL) gene sequences and used for a polymorphism analysis with 171 accessions as a set of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) rice mini-core collection established in the US. This mini-core represents the core of 1 794 accessions and the entire collection of 18 412 accessions. In total, 140 bands were amplified, and 128 of them were polymorphic, occupying a great majority (up to 91.4%) of the mini-core collection. The average number of alleles per locus was 7.4. The cluster and principal coordinate analysis agreeably classified the 171 accessions into six subgroups (subgroups â… -â…¥), and those in the same subgroup were distributed throughout similar geographical and ecological regions worldwide. Days to heading for subgroup â…¥ was significantly greater than the overall mean. Similarly, the plant height for subgroup â…¡ and spikelets per panicle for subgroups â…  and â…¢ were significantly different from the overall mean, respectively. Thus, the OsSPL genes were associated with the days to heading, plant height and spikelets per panicle.

Rice; SQUAMOSA promoter-binding-like (SPL) genes family; Germplasm; Core collection; Gene-trait association