Wheat Ms2 encodes for an orphan protein that confers male sterility in grass species

摘要

Male sterility is a valuable trait for plant breeding and hybrid seed production. The dominant male-sterile gene Ms2 in common wheat has facilitated the release of hundreds of breeding lines and cultivars in China. Here, we describe the map-based cloning of the Ms2 gene and show that Ms2 confers male sterility in wheat, barley and Brachypodium . MS2 appears as an orphan gene within the Triticinae and expression of Ms2 in anthers is associated with insertion of a retroelement into the promoter. The cloning of Ms2 has substantial potential to assemble practical pipelines for recurrent selection and hybrid seed production in wheat.