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The complex REDUCED COMPLEXITY locus contributes to leaf shape diversification in Brassica rapa
Pan Li1,2,3,4, Hongjia Xin1,2,3,4, Jing Li1,2,3,4,5
1State Key Laboratory of Vegetable Biobreeding, Beijing Vegetable Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Science, Beijing 100097, China.
None:
Leaf shape is a vital economic and developmental trait of the leafy vegetable Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa L. subsp. pekinensis). However, the molecular basis of leaf shape determination remains unclear. Here, we identified an incompletely dominant major quantitative trait locus qBrLLA10 on chromosome A10 in B. rapa. Map-based cloning revealed that BrRCO, encoding a HD-Zip transcription factor, is the causal gene underlying lobed leaf formation in B. rapa. Sequence analysis of parental alleles revealed abundant variations in the promoter region of BrRCO, which are responsible for leaf shape differentiation between the two parents. Ectopic BrRCO overexpression in Arabidopsis led to deeply lobed leaves, and leaf lobe development was blocked when BrRCO expression was down-regulated in virus-induced gene silencing assays. Synteny analysis of BrRCO loci in 12 representative B. rapa accessions revealed highly variable promoter regions and relatively conserved coding regions of BrRCO; these results suggest that cis-regulatory evolution underlies the functional diversification of the RCO locus in different species. Taken together, our findings revealed that BrRCO positively regulates leaf lobe formation in B. rapa, and cis-regulatory element modifications result in functional variation among different species, providing a novel insight into improvement in leaf shape in Chinese cabbage and other Brassica species.
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