Establishing Physalis as a Solanaceae model system enables genetic reevaluation of the inflated calyx syndrome
The highly diverse Solanaceae family contains several widely studied models and crop species. Fully exploring, appreciating, and exploiting this diversity requires additional model systems. Particularly promising are orphan fruit crops in the genus Physalis, which occupy a key evolutionary position...
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Published in | The Plant cell Vol. 35; no. 1; pp. 351 - 368 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB)
02.01.2023
Oxford University Press |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The highly diverse Solanaceae family contains several widely studied models and crop species. Fully exploring, appreciating, and exploiting this diversity requires additional model systems. Particularly promising are orphan fruit crops in the genus Physalis, which occupy a key evolutionary position in the Solanaceae and capture understudied variation in traits such as inflorescence complexity, fruit ripening and metabolites, disease and insect resistance, self-compatibility, and most notable, the striking inflated calyx syndrome (ICS), an evolutionary novelty found across angiosperms where sepals grow exceptionally large to encapsulate fruits in a protective husk. We recently developed transformation and genome editing in Physalis grisea (groundcherry). However, to systematically explore and unlock the potential of this and related Physalis as genetic systems, high-quality genome assemblies are needed. Here, we present chromosome-scale references for P. grisea and its close relative Physalis pruinosa and use these resources to study natural and engineered variations in floral traits. We first rapidly identified a natural structural variant in a bHLH gene that causes petal color variation. Further, and against expectations, we found that CRISPR-Cas9-targeted mutagenesis of 11 MADS-box genes, including purported essential regulators of ICS, had no effect on inflation. In a forward genetics screen, we identified huskless, which lacks ICS due to mutation of an AP2-like gene that causes sepals and petals to merge into a single whorl of mixed identity. These resources and findings elevate Physalis to a new Solanaceae model system and establish a paradigm in the search for factors driving ICS. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Present address for Michael Alonge: Ohalo Genetics, Aptos, California, 95003, USA Present address for Nathan T. Reem: Benson Hill, St. Louis, Missouri, 63132, USA. Present address for Sebastian Soyk: Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, CH-1005 Lausanne, Switzerland Present address for Matthias Benoit: LIPME, Université de Toulouse, INRAE, CNRS, Castanet-Tolosan, 31326, France. |
ISSN: | 1040-4651 1532-298X 1532-298X |
DOI: | 10.1093/plcell/koac305 |