Abstract
To contribute to a further insight into heterosis we applied an integrative analysis to a systems biological network approach and a quantitative genetics analysis towards biomass heterosis in early Arabidopsis thaliana development. The study was performed on the parental accessions C24 and Col-0 and the reciprocal crosses. In an over-representation analysis it was tested if the overlap between the resulting gene lists of the two approaches is significantly larger than expected by chance. Top ranked genes in the results list of the systems biological analysis were significantly over-represented in the heterotic QTL candidate regions for either hybrid as well as regarding mid-parent and best-parent heterosis. This suggests that not only a few but rather several genes that influence biomass heterosis are located within each heterotic QTL region. Furthermore, the overlapping resulting genes of the two integrated approaches were particularly enriched in biomass related pathways. A chromosome-wise over-representation analysis gave rise to the hypothesis that chromosomes number 2 and 4 probably carry a majority of the genes involved in biomass heterosis in the early development of Arabidopsis thaliana.
Highlights
The heterosis phenomenon, known as hybrid vigor, was discovered in the early 20th century [1]
We performed an over-representation analysis (ORA) to analyze if two different approaches towards biomass heterosis in Arabidopsis thaliana point to similar genes which are probably responsible for this heterotic phenotype
A significant enrichment of the resulting genes from one analysis in the other would suggest that this assumption is true and, more genes influencing biomass heterosis are within the identified heterotic QTL regions than expected
Summary
The heterosis phenomenon, known as hybrid vigor, was discovered in the early 20th century [1]. We try to further approach the molecular basis of heterosis by integrating the results of our previously proposed systems biological hypothesis towards the understanding of heterosis on the molecular level [3,4] with the outcome of a quantitative genetics study for biomass heterosis in early development of Arabidopsis thaliana by Meyer et al [5]. In both analyses the same two parental accessions, C24 and Columbia (Col-0), which are known to show biomass heterosis in their crosses [6], were used
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