title: Novel Genes Affecting the Interaction between the Cabbage Whitefly and Arabidopsis Uncovered by Genome-Wide Association Mapping.
abstract: Plants have evolved a variety of ways to defend themselves against biotic attackers. This has resulted in the presence of substantial variation in defense mechanisms among plants, even within a species. Genome-wide association (GWA) mapping is a useful tool to study the genetic architecture of traits, but has so far only had limited exploitation in studies of plant defense. Here, we study the genetic architecture of defense against the phloem-feeding insect cabbage whitefly (Aleyrodes proletella) in Arabidopsis thaliana. We determined whitefly performance, i.e. the survival and reproduction of whitefly females, on 360 worldwide selected natural accessions and subsequently performed GWA mapping using 214,051 SNPs. Substantial variation for whitefly adult survival and oviposition rate (number of eggs laid per female per day) was observed between the accessions. We identified 39 candidate SNPs for either whitefly adult survival or oviposition rate, all with relatively small effects, underpinning the complex architecture of defense traits. Among the corresponding candidate genes, i.e. genes in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with candidate SNPs, none have previously been identified as a gene playing a role in the interaction between plants and phloem-feeding insects. Whitefly performance on knock-out mutants of a number of candidate genes was significantly affected, validating the potential of GWA mapping for novel gene discovery in plant-insect interactions. Our results show that GWA analysis is a very useful tool to gain insight into the genetic architecture of plant defense against herbivorous insects, i.e. we identified and validated several genes affecting whitefly performance that have not previously been related to plant defense against herbivorous insects.
authors.affiliation: Wageningen UR Plant Breeding, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.|Plant-Microbe Interactions, Department of Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Colette
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Broekgaarden
authors.affiliation: Wageningen UR Plant Breeding, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bucher
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Plant Physiology, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.|Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Johanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bac-Molenaar
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Joost J B
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Keurentjes
authors.affiliation: Biometris-Applied Statistics, Department of Plant Science, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Willem
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Kruijer
authors.affiliation: Wageningen UR Plant Breeding, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Roeland E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Voorrips
authors.affiliation: Wageningen UR Plant Breeding, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Vosman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000469:parasitology; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D001937:Brassica; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D006430:Hemiptera / Q000502:physiology*; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium; D010641:Phenotype; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci
chemical_list: D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins