Genetics Meets Nutriomics: Genomic-Assisted Marker Development for Nutritional Quantitative Traits

Genomic study and nutrition research have been developed in parallel for a long time. Plant nutriomics is a new frontier in plant biology, involving genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomics in a network. Brassica species comprises a large and diverse group of vegetables, fodder, and oil crops. Chinese cabbage (B. rapa ssp. pekinensis) is an important leafy vegetables with a heading character. Since the draft sequencing of the Chinese cabbage genome was completed, functional genomics research has been rapidly expanded to understand metabolic pathways and regulatory mechanisms of related genes. In our group, we concentrated on the genetic control and variation of glucosinolate and carotenoids compound. We combined a comparative mapping study, traditional QTL mapping and candidate gene association mapping to discover their metabolic pathways and regulatory mechanisms of related genes. QTL analysis for glucosinolate accumulation in B. rapa leaves and seeds was carried out by using a mapping population. Through synteny genomic comparison to A. thaliana, candidate genes and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) between parental lines were identified from whole genome re-sequenced data by NGS (Next Generation Sequencing). In addition, for carotenoids, 57 full length CDs were identified from Brassica. These genes were also identified in in-home developed 50K microarray dataset for Chiifu and RCBr, and their levels of differential expressions were checked. Moreover, numerous collected Brassica accessions and germplasms supported by Korea Brassica Genome Resource Bank were also used for important functional compound analysis. With the accessions and microspore culture, we have developed doubled haploid lines and finally selected inbred lines containing high concentration of specific compounds, which paves the way for further study.