Tetraploid watermelon lines that result from chromosome doubling are important for breeding triploid elite seedless watermelon varieties. CucCAP scientists at West Virginia State University (WVSU) (Umesh Reddy and team) and USDA, ARS (Amon Levi) used advance genome sequencing technology to study the effect of genome doubling on gene expression in tetraploid watermelon versus their counterpart diploid watermelon parental plants. They observed a number of factors influencing gene expression and ultimately phenotype in the tetraploid plants including: interactions between regions from different chromosomes, chromosomal domains that switched from inactive to active, and hypomethylation of a large number of genes that are important for development and disease resistance. Their study was published as a feature article at Plant Journal.
Read the article:
- Altered chromatin conformation and transcriptional regulation in watermelon following genome doubling
by: Marleny Garcia-Lozano, Purushothaman Natarajan, Amnon Levi, Ramesh Katam, Carlos Lopez-Ortiz,Padma Nimmakayala, and Umesh K. Reddy
Published: February 5, 2021 in The Plant Journal (2021) 106, 588–600
DOI:10.1111/tpj.15256
