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

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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.