Collaborative Research: Initiation of a sex-determining chromosome: insights from sexually dimorphic strawberries

常染色体决定性别的染色体进化是雌雄异株生物的普遍特征，值得注意的是，同样的进化步骤似乎也发生在动物、真菌和植物中。尽管在广泛的生物体中进行了研究，但这种染色体转变的最早阶段仍然几乎没有被探索过。通过使用两个密切相关的野生草莓物种，并结合遗传学、基因组学、生物信息学、生态学和系统学等方法，这项研究将为这一转变的基本步骤提供变革性的洞察。特别是，基因组指纹和负责重组抑制的选择性作用力将被详细研究。这项工作还将为开花植物性别决定基因组区域的比较基因组研究提供分类多样性和急需的数据。这项工作将有助于促进本科生、研究生和博士后在基因组学、生物信息学、遗传和生态实验设计方面的培训，以及开发侧重于草莓遗传学的中学课程。它将通过扩大我们对性别决定基因的专门知识，以及关于栽培草莓重要野生近缘的遗传和基因组多样性的一般知识，为社会做出贡献，并通过国家数据库和种质库向更广泛的科学界提供植物和基因组资源。这项工作还将首次揭示伴随着基因组合并和性别分离而发生的基因组变化，这是许多植物谱系的一个特征。

The evolution of sex-determining chromosomes from autosomes is a universal feature of dioecious organisms, and remarkably, the same evolutionary steps seem to occur in animals, fungi and plants. Despite studies in a wide range of organisms, the very earliest stages in this chromosomal transition remain nearly unexplored. Through the use of two closely related species of wild strawberry, and a merger of approaches including genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, ecology and systematics, this research will offer transformative insight into the steps fundamental to this transition. In particular, the genomic fingerprint and selective forces responsible for recombination suppression will be examined in detail. This work will also provide taxonomic diversity and much needed data for comparative genomic studies of sex-determining genomic regions across the flowering plants.This work will contribute to the promotion of undergraduate, graduate student and postdoc training in genomics, bioinformatics, genetic and ecological experimental design, as well as the development of a middle school curriculum that will focus on genetics in strawberry. It will contribute to society by expanding our specific knowledge of genes for sex-determination, and general knowledge of genetic and genomic diversity in important wild relatives of the cultivated strawberry, as well as provide plant and genomic resources to the wider scientific community via national databases and germplasm repositories. This work will also shed first light on the genomic changes that accompany the co-occurrence of genome merger and separate sexes that is a feature of many plant lineages.