Genome-wide association studies to dissect the genetic architecture of yield-related traits in maize and the genetic basis of heterosis

摘要

This dissertation includes a general introduction (Chapter 1), three journal manuscripts (Chapters 2 to 4) and a section of general conclusions (Chapter 5). The paper in Chapter 2, which compares three statistical approaches for conducting GWAS and identifies the genetic architecture controlling for KRN trait, has been submitted for publication. I made major contributions include designing and performing the experiments, analyzing data and writing the manuscript under the guidance of Dr. Schnable. Dr. Nettleton and Dr. Dekkers provided technical support and conceptual advice for this work. The paper in Chapter 3, which investigates the modes of inheritance of trait-associated variants for seven yield-related traits and provides insight into heterosis, will soon be submitted for publication. I made major contributions to this experiment that include designing the experiments, supervising the data collection, data investigations, and writing the manuscript under the guidance of Dr. Schnable. Dr. Nettleton provided technical support and conceptual advice for this work. The paper in Chapter 4 reports a new method (termed XP-GWAS,) that uses pools of extreme-phenotype for conducting GWAS, will also be submitted for publication. My contributions to this paper include developing the concept, designing experiments, analyzing data and writing the manuscripts under the guidance of Dr. Schnable. The co-first author, Haiying Jiang assisted with data collection. Dr. Nettleton advised on the data analysis and wrote some custom R scripts for the data analysis.