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Materials and methods

Source of the probe
Aneuploid analysis was done using the NcoI-EcoRI 335 bp DNA fragment encoding amino acid residues 67-178 from the deduced open reading frame of wheat protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) cDNA (Shimoni et al. 1995). In addition, for RFLP studies of wheat and related species, we have also used the 3'untranslated region (3'UTR) of the same cDNA which was a 234 bp SacI-XhoI fragment, from the first nucleotide 5' of the stop codon to the cloning site.


Results and discussion

Chromosomal location, deletion mapping and copy number
Hybridization experiments conducted under high stringency using the PDI coding probe revealed three fragments of similar signal intensity on Southern blots of the common hexaploid wheat cv. Chinese Spring (CS). Southern analysis of wheat nullisomic-tetrasomic and ditelosomic lines of CS allowed us to assign these fragments to chromosome arm 4AL, 4BS and 4DS (
Fig. 1). Wheat chromosome 4A is known to have undergone complex rearrangements (Naranjo et al. 1987; Devos et al. 1995). We inferred that PM maps proximal to the 4AL/5AL translocation breakpoint, since it remained on chromosome 4A.

The physical location of the PDI genes on chromosome 4D was studied by deletion mapping, using DNA isolated from Endo's (1988) deletion stocks. The sequence from the 4DS chromosome arm (
Fig. 2) was missing in lines 4DS-1 and 4DS-3, with fraction length (FL, the chromosome arm length in the deletion line relative to the standard length) of 0.53 and 0.67 respectively, whereas it was present in line 4DS-2, with FL of 0.82. This indicates that the corresponding PDI locus resides on the distal third of chromosome arm 4DS, between FL values 0.67 and 0.82. Inspection of the cytological map of wheat chromosome 4D (Mickelson- Young et al. 1995) indicates that this sub-chromosomal region, encompassing 15% of the arm length, currently lacks any molecular markers.
Comparison of the hybridization intensities of CS total DNA and known amounts of plasmid DNA corresponding to 5-40 copies of PDI (
Fig. 3) suggests that this sequences are present in ca. 30 copies in hexaploid wheat, or 5-6 copies per wheat constituent genome. This indicates that the number of PDI loci in wheat is similar to that in alfalfa (Shorrosh and Dixon 1991), barley (Chen and Hayes 1994) and maize (Li and Larkins 1996).

Gene nomenclature (McIntosh et al. 1993)
Xpdi (4A, 4B, 4D)

Polymorphism and presence of PDI sequences in wheat and related species
Southern analyses of DNA from 34 cultivars of bread wheat digested with four restriction enzymes (EcoRI, BamHL HindIII and DraI) did not detect any restriction fragment polymorphism, with both coding region and 3'UTR probes (data not shown). When the PDI coding probe was hybridized to DNAs extracted from wheat and related species of various origins and ploidy, digested with BamHI (
Fig. 4), 1-3 bands were detected. Hexaploid wheats (Panel A, lanes 1- 5) presented three monomorphic bands. Tetraploid wheats with genome AABB (lanes 6-11) showed two bands. With the exception of durum. wheat, they shared a B-genome fragment of higher mobility than the one from hexaploid wheat. T. timopheevi var. araraticum (lanes 12-14) presented an additional band and showed no intraspecific variation. Among the diploids, one band was observed in all accessions except for T. monococcum var. monococcum accession TMM04 (Panel B, lane 17) and T. monococcum var. boeoticum., accession TMB01 (Panel B, lane 20), which showed three and two fragments, respectively. T. tauschii accessions (Panel A, lanes 15-18) were monomorphic, with restriction fragments similar in size to the CS D-genome bands. Polymorphisms were evident between and within species of the S- genome Sitopsis group (Panel B, lanes 2-12), which is related to the B genome of hexaploid wheat. The A genome diploids (lanes 13-20) also showed interspecific and intraspecific variation, with no variant closely matching the gel mobility of the A-genome M band in CS.

Despite limited polymorphism between bread wheat cultivars, the cytological location of the PDI locus, the absence of nearby cloned markers and observed variation in tetraploid wheat could make PDI an useful marker when analyzing DNA transfer from emmer wheat into hexaploid wheat.

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