2019_01 All Grapes - All Genes

What was the question behind this work

The transition from wild towards domesticated plants is not only relevant to understand human history, but also plant evolution. Since wild plants are often more resilient, they may serve as gold mine to search for resilience genes. Therefore, genome data are valuable.

What did we find out?

In an extensive campaign, several  hundreds of genomes were sequenced, both from wild grapevine species as well as from ancient landraces (representing early stages of domestication). Our collection of the European Wild Grapevine was central here. Originally established as part of a species conservation effort ex-situ, we supported a project by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, striving to sequence genomes from this collection. After a corresponding contract had been closed, we sent the DNA from our wild grapevines to China and two years later we received in turn the sequence data (by internet transfer, requiring several weeks, since it is not allowed to mail hard drives from China). This huge dataset helped us to construct a comprehensive view on grapevine evolution and will also in the future reveal numerous facettes of grapevine history.

Where do we go from here?

Meanwhile, the huge amount of data have been organised into a searchable database, where we can, for each gene of interest, search for natural variants available in our collection. Thus, we have, in our Botanical Garden, not only assembled the entire gene pool for the European Wild Grapevine, but also the entire digital model of this gene pool. This allows to find out, for any trait of interest, which of our wild grapevines is suited as breeding source. This lifted our genetic resource onto a new level and in the coming years, we will further develop the potential of this resource to support a sustainable and climate-change resilient viticulture.

Publication

143. Liang ZC, Duan SC, Sheng J, Zhu SS, Ni XM, Shao JH, Liu CH, Nick P, Du F, Fan PG, Mao RZ, Zhu YF, Deng WP, Yang M, Huang HC, Liu YX, Ding YQ, Liu XJ, Jiang JF, Zhu YY, He XH, Chen W, Li SH, Dong Y (2019) Whole-genome resequencing of 472 Vitis accessions for grapevine diversity and demographic history analyses. Nature Communications 10, 1190 - pdf