Increased apomixis expression concurrent with genetic and epigenetic variation in a newly synthesized Eragrostis curvula polyploid

ZAPPACOSTA D; OCHOGAVIA ANA; RODRIGO JR; ROMERO JOSE R; MEIER MAURO; GARBUS INGRID; SILVINA PESSINO; ECHENIQUE VIVIANA

Scientific Reports

Macmillan Publishers Limited (trading as Nature Publishing Group

Año: 2014 vol. 4 p. 1 - 7

2045-2322

Eragrostis curvula includes biotypes reproducing through obligate and facultative apomixis or, rarely, fullsexuality. We previously generated a ??tetraploid-dihaploid-tetraploid?? series of plants consisting of atetraploid apomictic plant (T), a sexual dihaploid plant (D) and a tetraploid artificial colchiploid (C).Initially, plant C was nearly 100% sexual. However, its capacity to form non-reduced embryo sacsdramatically increased over a four year period (2003?2007) to reach levels of 85?90%. Here, we confirmedhigh rates of apomixis in plant C, and used AFLPs and MSAPs to characterize the genetic and epigeneticvariation observed in this plant in 2007 as compared to 2003. Of the polymorphic sequences, some had nocoding potential whereas others were homologous to retrotransposons and/or protein-coding-likesequences. Our results suggest that in this particular plant system increased apomixis expression isconcurrent with genetic and epigenetic modifications, possibly involving transposable elements.