Genetic linkage mapping in Hevea brasiliensis

Author(s)

Camila Campos Mantello

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Biologia
• Defense date: 2014-03-07

Examining board members

Anete Pereira de Souza; Gabriel Rodrigues Alves Margarido; Rafael Vasconcelos Ribeiro; Adonias Castro Virgens Filho; Mirian Perez Maluf

• Advisor: Antonio Augusto Franco Garcia; Anete Pereira de Souza

Abstract

Approximately 2.500 species are known to produce natural rubber. Hevea brasiliensis (Willd. ex Adr. de Juss.) Muell-Arg. also known as rubber tree is a species native to the Amazon rainforest and is the largest source of natural rubber in the world. Natural rubber has been used in more than 40,000 products and has great importance in the tire industry. Although the Amazon rainforest offers optimal conditions for growth and rubber yields due to its warm and humid climate, this region also provides optimal conditions for the fungus Microcyclus ulei P. Henn v. Arx which causes the South American Leaf Blight (SALB) disease. Thus, rubber tree plantations have expanded to escape areas that provides new stress conditions limiting their growth and latex production. The rubber tree breeding is trying to create a new cultivar that is resistant to these new conditions but the rubber tree cycle breeding is long and does not allow a rapid cultivar development. Thus, molecular biology techniques could provide a greater knowledge of H. brasiliensis genetic and could optimize field evaluation and, thus, reduce the time and area required for experiments. The present work developed new microsatellites (SSRs) markers for rubber tree from genomic enriched libraries. The new microsatellites were characterized and demonstrated a high allelic variability within H. brasiliensis genotypes. The transferability rate in other six species of the genus Hevea was greater than 80%. To develop new SSRs and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) markers, the panel transcriptome from two important cultivars (GT1 and PR255) was sequenced in Illumina GAIIx platform. The transcriptome obtained allowed a better knowledge about H. brasiliensis transcriptome and identified new transcripts for rubber tree public database. The sequences were submitted to a SSR and SNP search. The SSR frequency was one SSR each 2.8 kb and it was identified 1.709 new sequences with new SSRs for rubber tree database. A total of 404.114 putative SNPs were detected with a frequency of one SNP every 125 bp. Through Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) annotation, it was identified contigs corresponding to all the enzymes of mevalonate (MVA) and -C-methyl-D-erythritol 4-phosphate (MEP). Despite MVA and MEP pathways are being very well studied, since they are directly involved to rubber biosynthesis, this is the first time that molecular markers have been developed for such important pathways. The SSRs and SNPs developed were mapped in a full-sib population. The genetic linkage map has 383 molecular markers distributed in 20 linkage groups. This project contributed with 52 SSRs and 51 SNPs of the total mapped markers. Although the expected number of linkage groups are 18 (2n=36), the new genetic linkage map still has an incomplete coverage of the genome. Due to the high frequency of the SNPs in the genome, the development of new markers can saturate this map homogeneously (AU)