|
|
||||||||
|
Plant Physiology 149:158-164 (2009) © 2009 American Society of Plant Biologists TILLING in Grass Species1Agronomy Department, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907
The reverse genetics detection of single base changes in genes of interest, whether induced or endogenous, is an extremely powerful tool for functional genomics. Two major thrusts of research in the grasses are characterizing the function of all the genes in various genomes and then comparing those functions among species. Targeting Induced Local Lesions IN Genomes (TILLING) has proven to be a valuable methodology for finding these polymorphisms in a wide range of plant and animal species and providing mutants carrying them to the researcher. With the advent of NextGen sequencing, targeted evaluation of thousands of genes across mutagenized populations with thousands of individuals will become much more widely available, and for a wide range of grass species. Completed genome sequences from multiple grass species greatly increase the power of reverse genetic approaches to understanding gene function. Perhaps the greatest advantage is the ability to triangulate gene functions among multiple taxa such as rice (Oryza sativa), maize (Zea mays), and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), and, together with efforts to create transposon and deletion collections in these plants, reverse genetics analysis of functionally important single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and mutations is a crucial part of the grass functional genomics toolkit.
Transposon and T-DNA approaches can be used in some species, but they are less applicable to most others, particularly grasses, where agroinfection needs to be coerced. Instead, chemical mutagenesis and TILLING have come into wide use (Comai and Henikoff, 2006
At the core of each of these efforts are the creation, increase, maintenance, and distribution of large, mutagenized populations. With the exception of maize, where pollen mutagenesis is possible, these populations have been developed through seed treatment, primarily with ethyl methane sulfonate (EMS) but occasionally with the use of other chemicals such as sodium azide and/or methylnitrosourea (MNU) in species where EMS proves less effective. Typically, the approach has been to try a range of treatment severity and select the treatment that gives a desired amount (typically 30%–40%) of M2 families segregating for embryo and seedling lethality (Till et al., 2006
As originally designed (McCallum et al., 2000 In contrast to typical forward mutagenesis screens, TILLING populations aim for the maximum number of mutations per plant that still allow the plants to be viable and fertile. Depending on the mutation density within the population being screened (a rate of one mutation per 500 kb or less is regarded as serviceable) and the random distribution of individual mutations throughout the genome of a given mutant population, TILLING can return allelic series for specific genes, with a wide variety of phenotypic effects. Certain types of mutations (for example, those that are gametophytic lethals and thus are not transmitted) simply cannot be recovered, but a major advantage to these populations is that most lethal and sterile alleles are maintained as heterozygotes and can still be assessed. In addition, the range of severity for point mutations means that, oftentimes, sublethal alleles of essential genes and substerile alleles of fertility genes can be analyzed as part of an allelic series. For maize, of 576 mutations delivered to date, informatics (e.g. SIFT [www.proweb.org]) based on nonconservative substitutions in conserved sequence motifs suggest that 14% are damaging alleles; however, 258 (or approximately 45%) of the mutations overall are nonsilent, and it is important to emphasize that any of these have the potential to show a biologically interesting phenotype.
The genetic diversity among grasses has also proven to be an advantage from a reverse genetic standpoint, using a variation on TILLING dubbed EcoTILLING after its introduction looking at natural variation among Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) ecotypes (Comai et al., 2004
TILLING projects among major grass crop species (maize, barley [Hordeum vulgare], rice, wheat [Triticum aestivum]) have been in operation for several years (Table II), using a variety of mutagens, and the reader is referred to these project Web pages for detailed information about each project. In addition, projects using TILLING, EcoTILLING, or a combination of the two are initiating or are being planned for several other grass species, including sorghum (M. Tuinstra, G. Ejeta, Z. Xin, and C. Weil, personal communication), oats (Avena sativa; O. Olsson, personal communication), the model cool season grass Brachypodium (Garvin et al., 2008
TILLING was designed, initially, as a cost-effective means of screening populations for changes in individual genes. At the time, sequencing costs and throughput were such that it was important to have a preliminary screening tool to identify the individuals that carried a mutation before sequencing efforts on that gene were carried out. This generation of sequencing technologies, which produce gigabases of data at extremely low cost, has changed that landscape considerably. Now, simply resequencing the gene of interest in thousands of lines is both feasible and inexpensive, particularly for mutagenized inbred lines where the unmutagenized inbred sequence can serve as a scaffold for sequence assembly. Resequencing entire genomes across a mutagenized population that numbers in the thousands is still not cost effective, and is debatable even once the goal of a $1,000 genome sequence is achieved. However, targeted resequencing of hundreds, or even thousands, of interesting genes within these populations is now within our grasp, cost effective, and can be done for as many as 30 to 50 genes per instrument run, potentially exceeding 2,000 genes analyzed per year per instrument. Various TILLING and SNP discovery projects are moving toward these sequencing approaches, using all three of the major platforms currently available (Roche 454, Illumina/Solexa, and ABI SOLiD; Comai and Henikoff, 2006 Even where a genome sequence can serve as a scaffold for assembly, care needs to be taken that the sequences being analyzed in any given instrument run do not share long sequence identities, which could complicate processing the data. Figure 2 shows a simple comparison of a concatenated genomic sequence of random maize genes (taken from the Maize Genome Sequencing project and totaling approximately 100,000 bp) to itself, using different potential read lengths and allowing two mismatches in the sequence, a level that could confuse correct identification of induced, single base changes. Ideally, the entire sequence would match only on the diagonal such that all sequences would have only one position into which they could fit in the assembly. For 17 of the 18 genes, the read lengths of 25 bp or more currently available on Illumina and ABI sequencing instruments would already provide straightforward assembly of the sequences, as do the much longer read lengths on Roche 454 instruments. The one gene in this test set that has repeated sequence within it requires significantly longer reads (>135 bp) to assemble easily; however, such exceptions can still be analyzed individually using Cel1 TILLING.
A major advantage to large-scale SequeTILLING is that DNA samples can be analyzed in much deeper pools than with the Cel1 approach. Preliminary data have suggested that for some instruments, pooling can be as high as 40- to 50-fold, compared to the 8-fold pooling typically used for robust Cel1 TILLING (E. Cuppen, unpublished data). The workflow (Fig. 3) generally consists of amplification of a gene from individual pools, followed by random shearing of the amplicons from that pool into pieces approximately 100 to 200 bp in length. Barcode sequences can be attached to the fragments as part of primers that are used to amplify the sequences in preparation for loading on the sequencing instrument. These barcodes are the first bases of the sequence read. Using a two-dimensional pooling strategy, individual mutants are identified by a unique combination of two barcodes (row and column). For example, a 48-fold pooled grid allows 2,304 individuals to be screened in 96 total reactions (48 rows and 48 columns), using 96 unique barcode sequences. It is generally advisable that each barcode sequence varies from all the other barcodes by at least two nucleotides to minimize any error; a five base barcode system can provide all the variability needed without giving up too much of the sequence read, crucial on instruments where read lengths are short. Gene fragments amplified from an individual pool all carry the same barcode at the beginning of their sequence and each individual mutant plant is identifiable by a specific combination of two barcodes (one row and one column in the 48 x 48 grid of 2,304). The unique, gene-specific nature of the rest of each read (within the sequences for that instrument run) allows them to be assembled into gene sequences relatively easily and assessed for single nucleotide changes in comparison to the reference DNA sequence for each gene. Any mutations can be assigned quickly to a specific individual. Error rates of individual sequencing instruments then become the major factor in determining how deeply sequences must be covered to get reliable mutation calling. If the material being analyzed is a mutagenized, elite inbred, then coverage of 3 to 5 times should reliably distinguish real mutations from sequencing artifacts; the same base change repeatedly associated with the same two barcodes would indicate a mutant individual.
Sequencing approaches can also apply readily to EcoTILLING, assigning individual barcodes to specific inbred lines or accessions rather than pools of mutants, and then resequencing target genes in these collected lines. Sequencing several independent samples of each accession will robustly distinguish real SNPs from sequencing errors although, because of their inherent variability, these sequences will need to be covered at greater depth to make assignment of SNPs to accessions reliable. One of the important developments to grow out of this quantum leap in throughput is that, even though the research community is still requesting TILLING of a variety of species, the capacity to generate the data is now substantially greater than the user requests for EMS TILLING of specific genes. Consider that a small number of gigabase sequencer runs would quickly equal all the TILLING that has been done to date. The future for these resources may well be that, as mutant populations are being developed and expanded for various grass species, research communities focused on those species need to begin assembling lists of genes for which mutations are desired and develop prioritized approaches for screening them. As massively parallel sequencing methods become more widespread and accessible, the limiting feature of TILLING efforts will be the creation, mutation density testing, curation, and distribution of the mutant populations. Fortunately, once established and especially once shared publicly among researchers, these resources will pay benefits for many years to come as both forward and reverse screening tools.
I would like to thank Rita Monde, Dacia Daniel, Courtney Chambers, Leonie Leduc, Heather Sahm, and Tara Breen for technical assistance, and Philip SanMiguel, Paul Parker, Luca Comai, Dick McCombie, and Dick Johnson for valuable discussions. Received August 31, 2008; accepted October 23, 2008; published January 7, 2009.
1 This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Plant Genome Award (grant no. DBI0604765) and the Purdue Agricultural Research Station. The author responsible for the distribution of materials integral to the findings presented in this article in accordance with the policy described in the Instructions for Authors (www.plantphysiol.org) is: Clifford F. Weil (cweil{at}purdue.edu). www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.108.128785
Caldwell DG, McCallum N, Shaw P, Muehlbauer GJ, Marshall DF, Waugh R (2004) A structured mutant population for forward and reverse genetics in Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). Plant J 40: 143–150[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] Comai L, Henikoff S (2006) TILLING: practical single-nucleotide mutation discovery. Plant J 45: 684–694[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] Comai L, Young K, Till BJ, Reynolds SH, Greene EA, Codomo CA, Enns LC, Johnson JE, Burtner C, Odden AR, et al (2004) Efficient discovery of DNA polymorphisms in natural populations by EcoTILLING. Plant J 37: 778–786[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] Garvin D, Gu YQ, Hasterok R, Hazen S, Jenkins G, Mockler TC, Mur LA, Vogel JP (2008) Development of genetic and genomic research resources for Brachypodium distachyon, a new model system for grass crop research. Crop Sci 48: S69–S84[CrossRef][Web of Science] Groth D, Santini J, Hamaker BR, Weil CF (2008) High-throughput screening of EMS mutagenized maize for altered starch digestibility. BioEnergy Res 1: 118–135[CrossRef] Liu K, Goodman M, Muse S, Smith JS, Buckler E, Doebley J (2003) Genetic structure and diversity among maize inbred lines as inferred from DNA microsatellites. Genetics 165: 2117–2128 McCallum CM, Comai L, Greene EA, Henikoff S (2000) Targeting induced local lesions IN genomes (TILLING) for plant functional genomics. Plant Physiol 123: 439–442 Narasimhamoorthy B, Saha MCTS, Bouton JH (2008) Genetic diversity in switchgrass collections assessed by EST-SSR markers. BioEnergy Res 1: 136–146[CrossRef] Slade AJ, Fuerstenberg SI, Loeffler D, Steine MN, Facciotti D (2005) A reverse genetic, nontransgenic approach to wheat crop improvement by TILLING. Nat Biotechnol 23: 75–81[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] Suzuki T, Eiguchi M, Kumamaru T, Satoh H, Matsusaka H, Moriguchi K, Nagato Y, Kurata N (2008) MNU-induced mutant pools and high performance TILLING enable finding of any gene mutation in rice. Mol Genet Genomics 279: 213–223[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] Talame V, Bovina R, Sanguineti MC, Tuberosa R, Lundqvist U, Salvi S (2008) TILLMore, a resource for the discovery of chemically induced mutants in barley. Plant Biotechnol J 6: 477–485[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline] Till BJ, Burtner C, Comai L, Henikoff S (2004a) Mismatch cleavage by single-strand specific nucleases. Nucleic Acids Res 32: 2632–2641 Till BJ, Cooper J, Tai TH, Colowit P, Greene EA, Henikoff S, Comai L (2007) Discovery of chemically induced mutations in rice by TILLING. BMC Plant Biol 7: 19[CrossRef][Medline] Till BJ, Reynolds SH, Weil C, Springer N, Burtner C, Young K, Bowers E, Codomo CA, Enns LC, Odden AR, et al (2004b) Discovery of induced point mutations in maize genes by TILLING. BMC Plant Biol 4: 12[CrossRef][Medline] Till BJ, Zerr T, Comai L, Henikoff S (2006) A protocol for TILLING and EcoTILLING in plants and animals. Nat Protocols 1: 2465–2477[CrossRef] Weil CF, Monde RA (2007) Getting the point: mutations in maize. Crop Sci 47: S60–S67 Whitt SR, Wilson LM, Tenaillon MI, Gaut BS, Buckler ES IV (2002) Genetic diversity and selection in the maize starch pathway. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99: 12959–12962 Xin Z, Wang ML, Barkley NA, Burow G, Franks C, Pederson G, Burke J (2008) Applying genotyping (TILLING) and phenotyping analyses to elucidate gene function in a chemically induced sorghum mutant population. BMC Plant Biol 8: 103[CrossRef][Medline] This article has been cited by other articles:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| ASPB Publications | PLANT PHYSIOLOGY® | THE PLANT CELL | |
|---|---|---|---|