Tools for modifying chromosome pairing and recombination during breeding

野生近缘小麦具有耐旱性强、耐盐性强、耐寒性强、抗病能力强等优良特性。为了满足在气候变化和土壤条件恶劣的条件下种植小麦的需要，能够通过将负责这些特性的基因转移到小麦中来利用这些特性将变得越来越重要。然而，由于小麦基因组的复杂性，通过常规育种将其转化到小麦中是非常困难的。小麦有三组遗传信息，即基因组，这本来就应该使小麦遗传不稳定。稳定性是由一种名为ph1的基因复合体赋予的，它有效地防止了不同基因组之间的基因重组。基因组A中的基因只能与A中的基因重组，B中的基因只能与B中的基因重组，好消息是它使小麦基因稳定。坏消息是，这也使得将野生物种的可取基因移植到现代小麦品种中变得非常困难。但现在，在对PH1机制进行了广泛的研究后，我们相信我们知道如何暂时关闭PH1基因复合体，使育种者能够在不破坏田间遗传稳定性的情况下转移有用的“野生”基因。这将大大增加育种者可以用来改良品种的遗传物质池。

Wild relatives of wheat have useful charcteristics such as increased tolerance to drought, salt and cold as well as resistance to various diseases. To meet the requirements of growing wheat under climate change and poor soil conditions, it will become increasingly important to be able to exploit such characteristics by transferring the genes responsible for such traits to wheat. However this transfer into wheat by conventional breeding has previously been very difficult because of the complexity of the wheat genome. Wheat has three sets of genetic information, or genomes, which inherently should make wheat genetically unstable. Stability is conferred by a gene complex, known as Ph1, which effectively prevents recombination of genes across the different genomes. Genes in genome A can only recombine with genes from A, B with B, etc. The good news is that it makes wheat genetically stable. The bad news is it also makes it very hard to get desirable genes from wild species into modern wheat varieties. But now, following extensive research into the Ph1 mechanism, we believe that we know how to temporarily switch off the Ph1 gene complex allowing breeders to transfer in useful 'wild' genes, without upsetting the genetic stability in the field. It will greatly increase the pool of genetic material breeders can use to improve varieties.