Genomic and genic sequence variation in synthetic hexaploid wheat (AABBDD) as compared to their parental species

In order to understand the genomic changes during evolution of hexaploid wheat, two sets of synthetic hexaploid wheat from hybridization between maternal tetraploid wheat (AABB) and paternal diploid goat grass (DD) were used for DNA-AFLP and single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis to determine the genomic and genic variation in the synthetic hexaploid wheat. Results indicated that more DNA sequences from paternal diploid species were eliminated in the synthetic hexaploid wheat than from maternal tetraploid wheat, suggesting that genome from parental species of lower ploidity tends to be eliminated preferentially. However, sequence variation detected by SSCP procedure was much lower than those detected by DNA-AFLP, which indicated that much less variation in the genic regions occurred in the synthetic hexaploid wheat, and sequence variations detected by DNA-AFLP could be derived mostly from non-coding regions and repetitive sequences. Our results also indicated that sequence variation in 4 genes can be detected in hybrid F1, which suggested that this type of sequence variation could be resulted from distant hybridization. It was interesting to note that 3 out of the 4 genes were mapped and clustered on the long arm of chromosome 2D, which indicated that variation in genic sequences in synthetic hexaploid wheat might not be a randomized process.