Unlike most eukaryotes, undomesticated, outcrossing perennial plant species such as Populus trichocarpa exhibit high levels of defective allele penetrance in their natural populations. We are leveraging this unique feature to perform highly resolved genome-wide association mapping studies (GWAS) as a means to address one of the top 5 Grand challenges in biology, i.e Linking genotype to phenotype in order to identify molecular targets for biological systems engineering. Our ability to perform these studies with no a priori assumptions about candidate genes has led to surprising insights including conserved gene function mediating expression of homologous phenotypes in plants and animals, evolution of novel transcriptional regulatory functions by canonical biosynthesis enzymes and de novo gene formation from non-coding DNA sequence.

Population-level genome re-sequencing targeting natural populations yields highly resolved molecular targets for biological engineering

256th National Meeting (2018)

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