Forces driving transposable element load variation during Arabidopsis range expansion

作者：Juan Jiang, Yong‐Chao Xu, Zhiqin Zhang, Jia‐Fu Chen, Xiao‐Min Niu, Xing-Hui Hou, X. Li, Li Wang, Yong E. Zhang, Song Ge, Ya‐Long Guo · 发表于：The Plant Cell · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1093/plcell/koad296 · 被引用次数：34 · 研究领域：Agronomic Practices and Intercropping Systems、Crop Yield and Soil Fertility、Soil Management and Crop Yield

Genetic load refers to the accumulated and potentially life-threatening deleterious mutations in populations. Understanding the mechanisms underlying genetic load variation of transposable element (TE) insertion, a major large-effect mutation, during range expansion is an intriguing question in biology. Here, we used 1,115 global natural accessions of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) to study the driving forces of TE load variation during its range expansion. TE load increased with range expansion, especially in the recently established Yangtze River basin population. Effective population size, which explains 62.0% of the variance in TE load, high transposition rate, and selective sweeps contributed to TE accumulation in the expanded populations. We genetically mapped and identified multiple candidate causal genes and TEs, and revealed the genetic architecture of TE load variation. Overall, this study reveals the variation in TE genetic load during Arabidopsis expansion and highlights the causes of TE load variation from the perspectives of both population genetics and quantitative genetics.