FISH and Plant Breeding

Plant Molecular Breeding and FISH Technology

Agriculture and plant conservation and breeding work are of great significance to species conservation and species evolution research. In crop breeding and genetic research, chromosomal mutations such as translocation, inversion, duplication, and deletion are often caused by physical induction, chemical, and genetic factors. Through genetic marker screening and trait selection, excellent traits suitable for the environment and large-scale production can be screened. A large number of chromosomal mutations have been created and used in the breeding of many food crops and cash crops. In situ hybridization tools such as FISH are convenient tools for analyzing genome structure and function, chromosomal composition, recombination mode, foreign gene infiltration, genome evolution, aneuploidy and polyploidy, and visualization of genome composition. FISH allows direct mapping of DNA sequences on chromosomes and has become an important tool for plant molecular cytogenetics research. One of the effective methods to construct physical maps of plant species is to use FISH technology and a digital imaging system to obtain them on meiotic chromosomes. The physical map based on FISH is an important supplementary method for genome sequencing and map cloning research. At the same time, the combination of FISH technology and other technologies has also expanded the application of FISH in plant breeding.

Fig 1. A FISH variant that can be used for plant molecular breeding analysis. (Ramzan F et al., 2017)

Methods of FISH Analysis in Plant Breeding

Repeated DNA sequences can generate unique FISH patterns on a single chromosome for karyotyping and phylogenetic analysis. FISH analysis in plant breeding is mainly through a set of oligonucleotide probes designed for repetitive sequences to achieve the researcher's purpose. This is because repetitive sequences are considered to have evolved under different evolutionary pressures, so the comparative positioning of repetitive sequences through FISH can facilitate phylogenetic analysis. Oligonucleotide probes designed from conserved DNA sequences of species can be used for comparative cytogenetic positioning of these species. The iteration and progress of probe types have greatly expanded the applications of FISH, especially in non-model plant species.

At present, FISH technology can achieve high-resolution analysis. The knowledge gained from the digital imaging system of meiotic chromosomes by FISH technology enables the construction of physical maps of plant species. Therefore, FISH has become an important method to distinguish different genomic chromosomes produced by various horticultural, food and commercial crops. The probe customization service provided by our FISH service platform can also help customers to seek non-commercial probe sets for FISH detection related to hybrid breeding and transgenic traits.

Fig 2. A brief procedure for performing FISH analysis in plant breeding.

Creative Bioarray offers a comprehensive range of analytical services and probe products to help plant breeding researchers address genome visualization problems at work. A one-stop research service can help researchers save costs and time. If you are interested in our FISH service, please contact us for cooperation. We look forward to cooperating with you in the near future.

References

1. Ramzan F, Younis A, Lim K B. Application of genomic in situ hybridization in horticultural science[J]. International journal of genomics, 2017, 2017.
2. Jiang J. Fluorescence in situ hybridization in plants: recent developments and future applications[J]. Chromosome Research, 2019, 27(3): 153-165.