Sex-biased gene expression in dioecious garden asparagus (Asparagus officinalis).

Sex chromosomes have evolved independently in phylogenetically diverse flowering plant lineages. The genes governing sex determination in dioecious species remain unknown, but theory predicts that the linkage of genes influencing male and female function will spur the origin and early evolution of sex chromosomes. For example, in an XY system, the origin of an active Y may be spurred by the linkage of female suppressing and male promoting genes. Garden asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) serves as a model for plant sex chromosome evolution, given that it has recently evolved an XX/XY sex chromosome system. In order to elucidate the molecular basis of gender differences and sex determination, we used RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) to identify differentially expressed genes between female (XX), male (XY) and supermale (YY) individuals. We identified 570 differentially expressed genes, and showed that significantly more genes exhibited male-biased than female-biased expression in garden asparagus. In the context of anther development, we identified genes involved in pollen microspore and tapetum development that were specifically expressed in males and supermales. Comparative analysis of genes in the Arabidopsis thaliana, Zea mays and Oryza sativa anther development pathways shows that anther sterility in females probably occurs through interruption of tapetum development before microspore meiosis.

The asparagus genome sheds light on the origin and evolution of a young Y chromosome.

Sex chromosomes evolved from autosomes many times across the eukaryote phylogeny. Several models have been proposed to explain this transition, some involving male and female sterility mutations linked in a region of suppressed recombination between X and Y (or Z/W, U/V) chromosomes. Comparative and experimental analysis of a reference genome assembly for a double haploid YY male garden asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) individual implicates separate but linked genes as responsible for sex determination. Dioecy has evolved recently within Asparagus and sex chromosomes are cytogenetically identical with the Y, harboring a megabase segment that is missing from the X. We show that deletion of this entire region results in a male-to-female conversion, whereas loss of a single suppressor of female development drives male-to-hermaphrodite conversion. A single copy anther-specific gene with a male sterile Arabidopsis knockout phenotype is also in the Y-specific region, supporting a two-gene model for sex chromosome evolution.

Retrotransposon Proliferation Coincident with the Evolution of Dioecy in Asparagus.

Current phylogenetic sampling reveals that dioecy and an XY sex chromosome pair evolved once, or possibly twice, in the genus Asparagus Although there appear to be some lineage-specific polyploidization events, the base chromosome number of 2n = 2× = 20 is relatively conserved across the Asparagus genus. Regardless, dioecious species tend to have larger genomes than hermaphroditic species. Here, we test whether this genome size expansion in dioecious species is related to a polyploidization and subsequent chromosome fusion, or to retrotransposon proliferation in dioecious species. We first estimate genome sizes, or use published values, for four hermaphrodites and four dioecious species distributed across the phylogeny, and show that dioecious species typically have larger genomes than hermaphroditic species. Utilizing a phylogenomic approach, we find no evidence for ancient polyploidization contributing to increased genome sizes of sampled dioecious species. We do find support for an ancient whole genome duplication (WGD) event predating the diversification of the Asparagus genus. Repetitive DNA content of the four hermaphroditic and four dioecious species was characterized based on randomly sampled whole genome shotgun sequencing, and common elements were annotated. Across our broad phylogenetic sampling, Ty-1 Copia retroelements, in particular, have undergone a marked proliferation in dioecious species. In the absence of a detectable WGD event, retrotransposon proliferation is the most likely explanation for the precipitous increase in genome size in dioecious Asparagus species.

Single nucleotide polymorphism isolated from a novel EST dataset in garden asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.).

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and simple sequence repeats (SSR) are abundant and evenly distributed co-dominant molecular markers in plant genomes. SSRs are valuable for marker assisted breeding and positional cloning of genes associated traits of interest. Although several high throughput platforms have been developed to identify SNP and SSR markers for analysis of segregant plant populations, breeding in garden asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) has been limited by a low content of such markers. In this study massively parallel GS-FLX pyro-sequencing technology (454 Life Sciences) has been used to sequence and compare transcriptome from two genotypes: a rust tolerant male (1770) and a susceptible female (G190). A total of 122,963 and 99,368 sequence reads, with an average length of 245.7bp, have been recovered from accessions 1770 and 190 respectively. A computational pipeline has been used to predict and visually inspect putative SNPs and SSR sequences. Analysis of Gene Ontology (GO) slim annotation assignments for all assembled uniscripts indicated that the 24,403 assemblies represent genes from a broad array of functions. Further, over 1800 putative SNPs and 1000 SSRs were detected. One hundred forty-four SNPs together with 60 selected SSRs were validated and used to develop a preliminary genetic map by using a large BC(1) population, derived from 1770 and G190. The abundance of SNPs and SSRs provides a foundation for the development of saturated genetic maps and their utilization in assisted asparagus breeding programs.