Article,

Association Mapping across Numerous Traits Reveals Patterns of Functional Variation in Maize

, , , , , and .
PLoS Genet, 10 (12): e1004845 (December 2014)
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004845

Abstract

We performed genome-wide association mapping analysis in maize for 41 different phenotypes in order to identify which types of variants are more likely to be important for controlling traits. We took advantage of a large mapping population (roughly 5000 recombinant inbred lines) and nearly 30 million segregating variants to identify ∼4800 variants that were significantly associated with at least one phenotype. While these variants are enriched in genes, most of them occur outside of genes, often in regions where regulatory elements likely lie. We also found a significant enrichment for paralogous (duplicated) genes, implying that functional divergence after gene duplication plays an important role in trait variation. Overall these analyses provide important insight into the unifying patterns of variation in traits across maize, and the results will likely also apply to other organisms with similarly large, complex genomes.

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