Deep re-sequencing of a widely used maintainer line of hybrid rice for discovery of DNA polymorphisms and evaluation of genetic diversity.

Genetic diversity within parental lines of hybrid rice is the foundation of heterosis utilization and yield improvement. Previous studies have suggested that genetic diversity was narrow in cytoplasmic male sterile (CMS/A line) and restorer lines (R line) for Three-line hybrid rice. However, the genetic diversity within maintainer lines (B line), especially at a genome-wide scale, remains largely unknown. In the present study, we performed deep re-sequencing of the elite maintainer line V20B (Oryza sativa L. ssp. indica). We then compared the V20B sequence with the 93-11 (Oryza sativa L. ssp. indica) genome sequence. 112.1 × 106 paired-end reads (PE reads) were generated with approximately 30-fold sequencing depth. The V20B PE reads uniquely covered 87.6 % of the 93-11 genome sequence. Overall, a total of 660,778 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) and 266,301 insertions and deletions (InDels) were identified, yielding an average of 2.1 SNPs/kb and 0.8 InDels/kb. Genome-wide distribution of the SNPs and InDels was non-random, and variation-rich and variation-poor regions were identified in all chromosomes. A total of 20,562 non-synonymous SNPs spanning 8,854 genes were annotated. Our results identified DNA polymorphisms at the genome-wide scale and uncovered the high level of genetic diversity between V20B and 93-11. Our results proved that next-generation sequencing technologies can be powerful tools to study genome-wide DNA polymorphisms, to query genetic diversity, and to enable molecular improvement efforts with Three-line hybrid rice. Further, our results also indicated that 93-11 could be used as core germplasm for the improvement of wild-abortive CMS lines and the maintainer lines.