Candidate Genes Modulating Reproductive Timing in Elite US Soybean Lines Identified in Soybean Alleles of Arabidopsis Flowering Orthologs With Divergent Latitude Distribution

Nicholas Dietz; Yen On Chan; Andrew Scaboo; George Graef; David Hyten; Mary Happ; Brian Diers; Aaron Lorenz; Dechun Wang; Trupti Joshi; Kristin Bilyeu

doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.889066

Candidate Genes Modulating Reproductive Timing in Elite US Soybean Lines Identified in Soybean Alleles of Arabidopsis Flowering Orthologs With Divergent Latitude Distribution

Front Plant Sci. 2022 Apr 29:13:889066. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.889066. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Nicholas Dietz¹, Yen On Chan^{2

3}, Andrew Scaboo¹, George Graef⁴, David Hyten⁴, Mary Happ⁴, Brian Diers⁵, Aaron Lorenz⁶, Dechun Wang⁷, Trupti Joshi^{2

3

8

9}, Kristin Bilyeu¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Division of Plant Science and Technology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States.
² Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States.
³ MU Data Science and Informatics Institute, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States.
⁴ Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, United States.
⁵ Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, United States.
⁶ Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, United States.
⁷ Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States.
⁸ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States.
⁹ Department of Health Management and Informatics, School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States.
¹⁰ USDA/ARS Plant Genetics Research Unit, Columbia, MO, United States.

Abstract

Adaptation of soybean cultivars to the photoperiod in which they are grown is critical for optimizing plant yield. However, despite its importance, only the major loci conferring variation in flowering time and maturity of US soybean have been isolated. By contrast, over 200 genes contributing to floral induction in the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana have been described. In this work, putative alleles of a library of soybean orthologs of these Arabidopsis flowering genes were tested for their latitudinal distribution among elite US soybean lines developed in the United States. Furthermore, variants comprising the alleles of genes with significant differences in latitudinal distribution were assessed for amino acid conservation across disparate genera to infer their impact on gene function. From these efforts, several candidate genes from various biological pathways were identified that are likely being exploited toward adaptation of US soybean to various maturity groups.

Keywords: development; flowering time; genomics; orthologs; reproductive phase; soybean; vegetative phase.