Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2017, Vol. 52 ›› Issue (1): 4-9.DOI: 10.11983/CBB16221

Special Issue: 水稻生物学专辑 (2017年52卷1期)

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Underlying Mechanism of Heterosis Unveiled by -Omics

Hongru Wang, Chengcai Chu*   

  1. The State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
  • Received:2016-11-15 Accepted:2016-12-10 Online:2017-01-01 Published:2017-01-23
  • Contact: Chu Chengcai
  • About author:

    # Co-first authors

Abstract: Heterosis, or hybrid vigor, is the phenomenon that hybrid displays growth or fertility superiority over its parents. Though widely exploited in agriculture, the underlying molecular mechanism of heterosis remains one of the lasting mysteries in biology. Recently, Chinese scientists leveraged genomics tools and systemically characterized the genetic architecture of rice heterosis using 10 074 F2 individuals resulting from 17 representative elite rice hybrid cultivars. Another Chinese team focused on the super hybrid cultivar LYP9 and studied its yield heterosis by integrating phenomic, genomic and transcriptomic data. The comprehensive mapping and analysis of heterosis QTLs with multi-omics tools provide valuable data for both testing heterosis hypothesis and purposely manipulating heterosis for breeding new cultivars.