Volume 14, Issue 3, March 2024

Select accessions of the cereal crop sorghum form mucilage-producing adventitious nodal roots that harbor nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which could contribute to agricultural sustainability by reducing the reliance on chemical fertilizers. Sorghum is gaining global interest as a versatile and climate-resilient crop. Wolf et al. report an effort to determine the genetic and environmental factors contributing to the formation of these so-called aerial roots as the basis for breeding programs aimed at sustainable production. Despite considerable phenotypic variation, the authors identify loci associated with the number of nodes with aerial roots and aerial root diameter.

Barragan et al. survey the progeny of wild Arabidopsis arenosa plants to determine the frequency of potentially deleterious phenotypes in natural populations, investigating the genetic basis of several such cases. They find a number of defects likely to decrease fitness in the wild; in some cases, those defects were associated with extended homozygosity at particular genomic regions. This study provides a methodological roadmap for detecting and comparing genetic architectures linked to deleterious phenotypes in wild self-incompatible plant populations.

PIGA-CDG is a rare genetic disorder of glycosylation characterized by seizures, intellectual and developmental delay, and congenital malformations. Here, Thorpe, Owings, Aziz et al. generate and characterize several Drosophila models of PIGA-CDG. These models faithfully recapitulate different patient phenotypes, including movement disorder and seizures, indicating that Drosophila is a good model for PIGA-CDG and potentially other glycosylation disorders.

Yocca et al. present a fully-phased chromosome-scale genome assembly of the European pear P. communis “d'Anjou”. This assembly will allow for genome-assisted breeding and will thus increase the pace of improvement for this relatively recently-cultivated, economically-important tree species. Additionally, comparative genomic studies within the Rose family (Rosaceae) may provide insight into the evolutionary history of the European pear. The genome assembly, annotation, and analyses were produced in a semester-long undergraduate and graduate course as part of the ACTG: American Campus Tree Genomes Initiative.