polymorphisms in o-methyltransferase genes are associated with stover cell wall digestibility in european maize (zea mays l.)o-methyltransferase基因多态性与干草细胞壁消化率在欧洲玉米(玉米l .).pdf

Brenner et al. BMC Plant Biology 2010, 10:27 /1471-2229/10/27 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Polymorphisms in O-methyltransferase genes are associated with stover cell wall digestibility in European maize (Zea mays L.) 1 2 1 3 2 4 Everton A Brenner , Imad Zein , Yongsheng Chen , Jeppe R Andersen , Gerhard Wenzel , Milena Ouzunova , Joachim Eder5 5 1 6 1* , Birte Darnhofer , Uschi Frei , Yves Barrière , Thomas Lübberstedt Abstract Background: OMT (O-methyltransferase) genes are involved in lignin biosynthesis, which relates to stover cell wall digestibility. Reduced lignin content is an important determinant of both forage quality and ethanol conversion efficiency of maize stover. Results: Variation in genomic sequences coding for COMT, CCoAOMT1, and CCoAOMT2 was analyzed in relation to stover cell wall digestibility for a panel of 40 European forage maize inbred lines, and re-analyzed for a panel of 34 lines from a published French study. Different methodologies for association analysis were performed and compared. Across association methodologies, a total number of 25, 12, 1, 6 COMT polymorphic sites were significantly associated with DNDF, OMD, NDF, and WSC, respectively. Association analysis for CCoAOMT1 and CCoAOMT2 identified substantially fewer polymorphic sites (3 and 2, respectively) associated with the investigated traits. Our re-analysis on the 34 lines from a published French dataset identified 14 polymorphic sites significantly associated with cell wall digestibility, two of them were consistent with our study. Promising polymorphisms putatively causally associated with variability of cell wal