Publications by authors named "Hideki Hirakawa"

Saintpaulia (African violet) pigmentation is notoriously unstable and sometimes forms white stripes, particularly following passage through tissue culture. White-striped petals were thought to be due to periclinal chimeras, but we confirmed that white stripes result from epigenetic regulation rather than periclinal chimeras based on the flower color traits of plants obtained from tissue culture. Gene expression in several plant lines, anthocyanin quantification, bisulfite sequencing, and methylation analyses were used to demonstrate the presence of a single MYB gene responsible for pigment variation.

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Nicotiana benthamiana has long served as a crucial plant material extensively used in plant physiology research, particularly in the field of plant pathology, because of its high susceptibility to plant viruses. Additionally, it serves as a production platform to test vaccines and other valuable substances. Among its approximately 3.

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  • Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) significantly affects spinach quality, and while host genetic resistance is a key management strategy, the genetic basis of resistance is not well understood.
  • Research identified that certain spinach lines showed susceptibility to CMV, while others, including traditional resistant cultivars, demonstrated resistance potentially linked to a single dominant allele (SRCm1).
  • The findings from this study provide a foundational model for understanding CMV resistance in spinach, which could improve future breeding programs aimed at enhancing crop resilience.
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  • The study introduces Anicom American Shorthair 1.0 (AnAms1.0), a new genome assembly for domestic cats, created from the more prevalent American Shorthair breed rather than the Abyssinian cat to better represent genetic diversity.
  • AnAms1.0 was developed using advanced genomics techniques and shows improved accuracy and contiguity compared to the previous reference genome (felCat9), revealing over 1,600 new protein-coding genes and significant structural variants.
  • The findings from AnAms1.0 will help in understanding genetic traits and diseases in domestic cats, with data available for public access to support further research in genetics and veterinary medicine.*
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Quinoa is emerging as a key seed crop for global food security due to its ability to grow in marginal environments and its excellent nutritional properties. Because quinoa is partially allogamous, we have developed quinoa inbred lines necessary for molecular genetic analysis. Our comprehensive genomic analysis showed that the quinoa inbred lines fall into three genetic subpopulations: northern highland, southern highland, and lowland.

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Micro-Tom is a cultivar of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), which is known as a major crop and model plant in Solanaceae. Micro-Tom has phenotypic traits such as dwarfism, and substantial EMS-mutagenized lines have been reported. After Micro-Tom was generated in Florida, USA, it was distributed to research institutes worldwide and used as a genetic resource.

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Salicylic acid (SA) is known to be involved in the immunity against ssp. () that causes bacterial canker in tomato. To identify the candidate genes associated with SA-inducible resistance, transcriptome analysis was conducted via RNA sequencing in tomato plants treated with SA.

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Although spinach is predominantly dioecious, monoecious plants with varying proportions of female and male flowers are also present. Recently, monoecious inbred lines with highly female and male conditions have been preferentially used as parents for F1-hybrids, rather than dioecious lines. Accordingly, identifying the loci for monoecism is an important issue for spinach breeding.

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  • Researchers studied somaclonal variation in rice plants (variety 'Nipponbare') by whole-genome sequencing after regenerating plants from different sources, including zygotes and embryos from a single mother plant.
  • They identified 338 genetic variants in the progeny, with mature embryo regenerants showing the highest mean variants, while seed-propagated plants had a lower natural mutation rate that matched previous findings.
  • The study found that zygotes and immature embryos lead to less somaclonal variation, suggesting a preferable approach for genetic manipulation of rice.
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Background: Plant genome information is fundamental to plant research and development. Along with the increase in the number of published plant genomes, there is a need for an efficient system to retrieve various kinds of genome-related information from many plant species across plant kingdoms. Various plant databases have been developed, but no public database covers both genomic and genetic resources over a wide range of plant species.

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Common buckwheat, Fagopyrum esculentum, is an orphan crop domesticated in southwest China that exhibits heterostylous self-incompatibility. Here we present chromosome-scale assemblies of a self-compatible F. esculentum accession and a self-compatible wild relative, Fagopyrum homotropicum, together with the resequencing of 104 wild and cultivated F.

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Subterranean clover ( L., Ts) is a geocarpic, self-fertile annual forage legume with a compact diploid genome (n = x = 8, 544 Mb/1C). Its resilience and climate adaptivity have made it an economically important species in Mediterranean and temperate zones.

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  • Nicotiana benthamiana is a model plant used in research for studying plant diseases and interactions due to its susceptibility to various viruses and ability to graft with diverse plant families.
  • The genome of N. benthamiana has been challenging to analyze because its previous reference was fragmented, but a new assembly method has produced a more complete genome with 57,583 high-confidence gene sequences.
  • The improved genome assembly allows for better understanding of its complex genetics, particularly in areas like grafting, making N. benthamiana more accessible for future research.
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Mycorrhizae are one of the most fundamental symbioses between plants and fungi, with ectomycorrhizae being the most widespread in boreal forest ecosystems. Ectomycorrhizal fungi are hypothesized to have evolved convergently from saprotrophic ancestors in several fungal clades, especially members of the subdivision Agaricomycotina. Studies on fungal genomes have identified several typical characteristics of mycorrhizal fungi, such as genome size expansion and decreases in plant cell-wall degrading enzymes (PCWDEs).

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A high-quality genome assembly is imperative to explore the evolutionary basis of characteristic attributes that define chemotype and provide essential resources for a molecular breeding strategy for enhanced production of medicinal metabolites. Here, using single-molecule high-fidelity (HiFi) sequencing reads, we report chromosome-scale genome assembly for Chinese licorice (Glycyrrhiza uralensis), a widely used herbal and natural medicine. The entire genome assembly was achieved in eight chromosomes, with contig and scaffold N50 as 36.

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Eustoma grandiflorum (Raf.) Shinn. is an annual herbaceous plant native to the southern United States, Mexico, and the Greater Antilles.

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Only two hydromedusan species, Turritopsis dohrnii and T. sp., have exhibited experimental multiple-repeat life cycle reversion in the laboratory, which can be artificially induced by various means such as incubation with CsCl, heat shock, and mechanical damage with needles.

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The first genome sequence of an interspecific grape hybrid (Vitis labruscana × Vitis vinifera), 'Shine Muscat', an elite table grape cultivar bred in Japan, is presented. The resultant genome assemblies included two types of sequences: a haplotype-phased sequence of the highly heterozygous genomes and an unphased sequence representing a 'pseudo-haploid' genome. The unphased sequences, assembled to the chromosome level with Hi-C reads, spanned 488.

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White rust caused by is one of the most serious diseases of chrysanthemum ( × ). In this study, we report the DNA markers associated with resistance against via a simple approach using the genome of a wild diploid relative, . First, we identified the important region of the genome in the resistant cultivar "Ariesu" via a genome-wide association study.

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Background: Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi) is an economically important deciduous conifer species that grows in cool-temperate forests and is endemic to Japan. Kuril larch (L. gmelinii var.

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Onions are one of the most widely cultivated vegetables worldwide; however, the development and utilization of molecular markers have been limited because of the large genome of this plant. We present a genome-wide marker design workflow for onions and its application in a high-throughput genotyping method based on target amplicon sequencing. The efficiency of the method was evaluated by genotyping of F2 populations.

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Transposable elements (TEs) constitute a large proportion of genomes of multicellular eukaryotes, including flowering plants. TEs are normally maintained in a silenced state and their transpositions rarely occur. Hybridization between distant species has been regarded as a 'shock' that stimulates genome reorganization, including TE mobilization.

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Bacterial canker of tomato (Solanum lycopersicon) caused by the Gram-positive bacterium Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. michiganensis (Cmm) is an economically important disease. To understand the host defense response to Cmm infection, transcriptome sequences in tomato cotyledons were analyzed by RNA-seq.

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Wild plants are often tolerant to biotic and abiotic stresses in their natural environments, whereas domesticated plants such as crops frequently lack such resilience. This difference is thought to be due to the high levels of genome heterozygosity in wild plant populations and the low levels of heterozygosity in domesticated crop species. In this study, common vetch () was used as a model to examine this hypothesis.

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Chrysanthemums are one of the most industrially important cut flowers worldwide. However, their segmental allopolyploidy and self-incompatibility have prevented the application of genetic analysis and modern breeding strategies. We thus developed a model strain, Gojo-0 (Chrysanthemum seticuspe), which is a diploid and self-compatible pure line.

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