Subgenome chromosome walking in wheat: a 450-kb physical contig in Triticum monococcum L. spans the Lr10 resistance locus in hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.).

For many agronomically important plant genes, only their position on a genetic map is known. In the absence of an efficient transposon tagging system, such genes have to be isolated by map-based cloning. In bread wheat Triticum aestivum, the genome is hexaploid, has a size of 1.6 x 10(10) bp, and contains more than 80% of repetitive sequences. So far, this genome complexity has not allowed chromosome walking and positional cloning. Here, we demonstrate that chromosome walking using bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones is possible in the diploid wheat Triticum monococcum (A(m) genome). BAC end sequences were mostly repetitive and could not be used for the first walking step. New probes corresponding to rare low-copy sequences were efficiently identified by low-pass DNA sequencing of the BACs. Two walking steps resulted in a physical contig of 450 kb on chromosome 1A(m)S. Genetic mapping of the probes derived from the BAC contig demonstrated perfect colinearity between the physical map of T. monococcum and the genetic map of bread wheat on chromosome 1AS. The contig genetically spans the Lr10 leaf rust disease resistance locus in bread wheat, with 0.13 centimorgans corresponding to 300 kb between the closest flanking markers. Comparison of the genetic to physical distances has shown large variations within 350 kb of the contig. The physical contig can now be used for the isolation of the orthologous regions in bread wheat. Thus, subgenome chromosome walking in wheat can produce large physical contigs and saturate genomic regions to support positional cloning.