Variation in the flowering gene SELF PRUNING 5G promotes day-neutrality and early yield in tomato

Soyk, S., Muller, N. A., Park, S. J., Schmalenbach, I., Jiang, K., Hayama, R., Zhang, L., Van Eck, J., Jimenez-Gomez, J. M., Lippman, Z. B. (January 2017) Variation in the flowering gene SELF PRUNING 5G promotes day-neutrality and early yield in tomato. Nat Genet, 49 (1). pp. 162-168. ISSN 1546-1718 (Electronic)1061-4036 (Linking) (Public Dataset)

Abstract

Plants evolved so that their flowering is triggered by seasonal changes in day length. However, day-length sensitivity in crops limits their geographical range of cultivation, and thus modification of the photoperiod response was critical for their domestication. Here we show that loss of day-length-sensitive flowering in tomato was driven by the florigen paralog and flowering repressor SELF-PRUNING 5G (SP5G). SP5G expression is induced to high levels during long days in wild species, but not in cultivated tomato because of cis-regulatory variation. CRISPR/Cas9-engineered mutations in SP5G cause rapid flowering and enhance the compact determinate growth habit of field tomatoes, resulting in a quick burst of flower production that translates to an early yield. Our findings suggest that pre-existing variation in SP5G facilitated the expansion of cultivated tomato beyond its origin near the equator in South America, and they provide a compelling demonstration of the power of gene editing to rapidly improve yield traits in crop breeding.

Item Type: Paper
Subjects: bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing
evolution
organism description > plant
organism description > plant > tomato
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Lippman lab
Depositing User: Matt Covey
Date: January 2017
Date Deposited: 09 Dec 2016 21:02
Last Modified: 07 Sep 2017 15:42
Related URLs:
Dataset ID:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/33922

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