Gametocidal factor-induced structural rearrangements in rye chromosomes added to common wheat

The gametocidal factor on the Aegilops cylindrica chromosome 2Cc was used to induce and analyze the nature of chromosomal rearrangements in rye chromosomes added to wheat. For this purpose we isolated plants disomic for a given rye chromosome and monosomic for 2Cc and analyzed their progenies cytologically. Rearranged rye chromosomes were identified in 7% of the progenies and consisted of rye deficiencies (4.6%), wheat rye dicentric and rye ring chromosomes (1.8%), and terminal translocations (0.6%). The dicentric and ring chromosomes initiated breakage-fusion-bridge cycles (BFB) that ceased within a few weeks after germination as the result of chromosome healing. Of 56 rye deficiencies identified, after backcrossing and selfing, only 33 were recovered in either homozygous or heterozygous condition covering all rye chromosomes except 7R. The low recovery rate is probably caused by the presence of multiple rearrangements induced in the wheat genome that resulted in poor plant vigor and seed set, low transmission, and an underestimation of the frequency of wheat rye dicentric chromosomes. Genomic in-situ hybridization (GISH) analysis of the 33 recovered rye deficiencies revealed that 30 resulted from a single break in one chromosome arm followed by the loss of the segment distal to the breakpoint. Only three had a wheat segment attached distal to the breakpoint. Although some of the Gc-induced rye rearrangements were derived from BFB cycles, all of the recovered rye rearrangements were simple in structure. The healing of the broken chromosome ends was achieved either by the de-novo addition of telomeric repeats leading to deficiencies and telocentric chromosomes or by the fusion with other broken ends in the form of stable monocentric terminal translocation chromosomes.