Haplotype structure in grain weight gene GW2 and its association with grain characteristics in rice

Abstract

GW2, a grain weight quantitative trait locus (QTL) in rice encodes a ring type E-3 ubiquitin ligase. A single nucleotide deletion at the 346th nucleotide position in the ligase domain of GW2 was earlier reported to result in higher grain weight in rice. The present study aimed at validating the known functional polymorphism and identifying additional natural genetic variation if any, in the region that included the functional domain of GW2 in a set of indica and aromatic genotypes for which ninety three rice genotypes were phenotyped for grain length, grain width and 100 grain weight. A wide range of variation was observed for these traits. PCR amplification and sequencing of GW2 target region revealed absence of insertion/deletion (InDel) at the 346th position which suggested that the genetic variation in grain weight in Basmati and non-Basmati indica genotypes was not explained by this InDel. However, four new single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were discovered at nucleotide positions 406, 461, 466 and 501 in the fifth exon and one InDel each in second and fourth introns. Only two of these SNPs, at positions 461 and 501 led to amino acid substitutions. A total of 10 haplotypes were constructed based on these four SNPs which could be regrouped into four categories based on their amino acid substitutions. Association genetic analysis of these haplotypes with different grain traits revealed a moderate association with grain width (R2 = 0.18 at P < 0.05). Thirteen haplotypes constructed using both intronic and exonic polymorphisms did not have any association with grain traits.