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Background Ovarian cancer greatly threatens the general health of women worldwide. Implementation of predictive prognostic biomarkers aids in ovarian cancer management. Methods Using online databases, the general expression profile, target-disease associations, and interaction network of PAWR were explored. To identify the role of PAWR in ovarian cancer, gene correlation analysis, survival analysis, and combined analysis of drug responsiveness and PAWR expression were performed. The predictive prognostic value of PAWR was further validated in clinical samples. Results PAWR was widely expressed in normal and cancer tissues, with decreased expression in ovarian cancer tissues compared with normal tissues. PAWR was associated with various cancers including ovarian cancer. PAWR formed a regulatory network with a group of proteins and correlated with several genes, which were both implicated in ovarian cancer and drug responsiveness. High PAWR expression denoted better survival in ovarian cancer patients (OS: HR = 0.84, P = 0.0077; PFS, HR = 0.86, P = 0.049). Expression of PAWR could predict platinum responsiveness in ovarian cancer and there was a positive correlation between PAWR gene effect and paclitaxel sensitivity. In 12 paired clinical samples, the cancerous tissues exhibited significantly lower PAWR expression than matched normal fallopian tubes. The predictive prognostic value of PAWR was maintained in a cohort of 50 ovarian cancer patients. Conclusions High PAWR expression indicated better survival and higher drug responsiveness in ovarian cancer patients. PAWR could be exploited as a predictive prognostic biomarker in ovarian cancer.

Hybrid sterility is a major obstacle to the development of superior inter-subspecific hybrids between indica and japonica subspecies of Asian-cultivated rice. To overcome hybrid sterility, we introduced four japonica alleles (S-j) at Sa, Sc, f5, and S32 loci from Nipponbare into 9311 through marker-assisted backcross breeding, and four improved lines were obtained. Three wide-compatibility lines 9311(S5-n), 9311(f5-n), and 9311(S5-n+f5-n) previously constructed were used as control and parental line of hybridization. By crossing with 9311(S5-n+f5-n), two pyramiding lines 9311(Sa+S5-n+f5-n) and 9311(S32+Sa+S5-n+f5-n) were obtained. To evaluate the gene effect of pollen fertility and spikelet fertility, the near-isogenic lines (NILs) harboring S5-n, f5-n, Sa, Sc, f5, or S32 and three pyramiding lines with S5-n+f5-n, Sa+S5-n+f5-n, or S32+Sa+S5-n+f5-n were testcrossed to six japonica varieties. The results showed that single-gene f5, f5-n, S32, and S5-n could significantly improve spikelet fertility in majority of indica-japonica hybrids. Single-gene Sa and Sc could significantly improve spikelet fertility in part of indica-japonica hybrids. Moreover, the pyramiding lines exhibited significantly higher spikelet fertility than the control in indica-japonica hybrids. A significant increase in spikelet fertility (31.4–55%) was observed in three- or four-gene pyramiding lines. Our results provide an effective approach to exploiting heterosis between indica and japonica subspecies, which had a profound implication in rice breeding.

The safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is an oil seed crop from which the flowers is used as medicine and food colorants. The present investigation was undertaken to explore gene effects for safflower’s pigments in flower including carthamin and carthamidin. Six generation including P $$_1$$ , P $$_2$$ , F $$_1$$ , F $$_2$$ , BC $$_1$$ and BC $$_2$$ that derived from two different crosses (Mex. 2-138 (P $$_2$$ ) $$\times $$ Wht–Esf (P $$_1$$ ) and C $$_{111}$$ (P $$_2$$ ) $$\times $$ Wht–Esf (P $$_1$$ ) were used for generation of mean analysis. The joint scaling test showed that additive [a], additive $$\times $$ additive [aa], and additive $$\times $$ dominance [ad] effects were significant for genetic control of carthamin and carthamidin in both crosses. The traits, including carthamidin and carthamin, had medium (48%) and low (17%) narrow-sense heritability, respectively. The results obtained here could be suitable for designing the breeding strategies based on selection to improve carthamin and carthamidin pigments in safflower.

In order to determine the heritability and combining ability of the parents and crosses, a complete diallel cross study of five wheat varieties was performed with parents and a total number of 20 F2 progenies under normal conditions in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications at the Nuclear Agricultural Research Institute. The importance of additive and non-additive effects was determined in the present study that may have implications in plant breeding programmes. The general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) were significant for all the features in this study, although reciprocal effects were significant only for the number of grains per spike. The GCA effect was more prevalent than the SCA effect in the studied traits. On the other hand, the SCA effect was only significant for yield, weight of grains per spike and peduncle length. Traits with high GCA can be improved by selecting valuable traits in progenies. In this study, Kealk parents were found to be suitable parents in the breeding programme to improve grain yield. Furthermore, the Brown Bolani × AS48 crosses were the best combination for improvement of yield and the number of grains per spike. Hayman analysis of variance showed the inheritance of all traits except yield and grain weight per spike which were mainly controlled by the additive gene effect. A high narrow sense heritability was detected for the length of the second and third internodes, peduncle diameter and plant height.

International audience; The basic principle of Marker-Assisted Selection (MAS) is to exploit Linkage Disequilibrium (LD) between markers and QTLs. With strong enough LD, MAS should in theory be easier, faster, cheaper, or more efficient than classical (phenotypic) selection. I briefly review the major MAS methods, describing some ‘success stories’ where MAS was applied successfully in the context of plant breeding, and detailing other cases where efficiency was not as high as expected. I discuss the possible causes explaining the difference between theoretical expectations and practical observations. Finally, I review the principal challenges and issues that must be tackled to make marker-assisted selection in plants more effective in the future, namely: managing and controlling QTL stability to apply MAS to complex traits, and integrating MAS in traditional breeding practices to make it more economically attractive and applicable in developing countries.

QTLs for salt-tolerance (ST) related traits at the seedling and tillering stages were identified using 99 BC(2)F(8) introgression lines (IL) derived from a cross between IR64 (indica) as a recurrent parent and Binam (japonica) from Iran as the donor parent. Thirteen QTLs affecting survival days of seedlings (SDS), score of salt toxicity of leaves (SST), shoot K(+) concentration (SKC) and shoot Na(+) concentration (SNC) at the seedling stage and 22 QTLs underlying fresh weight of shoots (FW), tiller number per plant (TN) and plant height (PH) at the tillering stage were identified. Most QTLs detected at the tillering stage showed obvious differential expression to salt stress and were classified into three types based on their differential behaviors. Type I included 11 QTLs which were expressed only under the non-stress condition. Type II included five QTLs expressed in the control and the salt stress conditions, and three of them (QPh5, QPh8 and QTn9) had similar quantity and the same direction of gene effect, suggesting their expression was less influenced by salt stress. Type III included six QTLs which were detectable only under salt stress, suggesting that these QTLs were apparently induced by the stress. Thirteen QTLs affecting trait difference or trait stability of ILs between the stress and non-stress conditions were identified and the Binam alleles at all loci except QPh4, QTn2 and QFw2a decreased trait difference. The three QTLs less influenced by the stress and 13 QTLs affecting trait stability were considered as ST QTLs which contributed to ST. Comparing the distribution of QTLs detected at the seedling and tillering stages, most (69%) of them were genetically independent. Only four were the same or adjacent regions on chromosomes 1, 2, 8 and 11 harboring ST QTLs detected at the two stages, suggesting that partial genetic overlap of ST across the two stages occurs. It is likely, therefore, to develop ST rice variety for both stages by pyramiding of ST QTLs of different stages or selection against the overlapping QTLs between the two stages via marker-assisted selection (MAS).

Using Hayman's model of genetic analysis of the F1 hybrids from crosses between early- and late-ripening forms of cotton Gossypium hirsutum L., we examined inheritance of the duration of vegetative period at various contents of nitrogen in soil. Two variants of hybrid plants were studied. With the natural content of soil nitrogen, incomplete directionally dominance of earliness over late ripening with prevalence of additive gene effect of nonallelic interactions was observed. The genetic formulas of this trait proved to change with varying nitrogen nutrition.

Deletion of a genomic locus may affect the function of neighboring loci, creating genetic uncertainty. Researchers now present a computational algorithm for identifying such neighboring-gene effects and improving the quality of functional annotations.

1691 F-2 progeny of a cross between Lycopersicon esculentum and L pimpinellifolium grown under field conditions were scored for 18 quantitative traits of economic interest and 10 segregating genetic markers. Each parental strain was homozygous for one allele of each marker. Four of the markers were electrophoretic, and six were morphological. Three pairs of the genetic markers were linked. An algorithm described previously based on maximum likelihood technique was used to estimate the parameters of loci affecting the quantitative traits linked to the genetic markers and the recombination distance between quantitative trait loci and marker loci. The parameters of quantitative trait loci linked to two genetic markers were also estimated by solving for gene effect and recombination frequency from the independent equations derived from each marker. In general there was close correspondence between estimates obtained from the two methods. Except for cases where highest likelihood was obtained at complete linkage, results of the approximate maximum likelihood technique were within the parameter space, i.e. recombination frequencies between zero and 0·5 and positive variance estimates. Unreasonable results were obtained when the assumptions of the method were violated. These results support those presented previously based on simulated results and a positive control indicating that, for samples of this size, accurate estimates are derived by the maximum likelihood technique. A genetic map of quantitative trait loci is presented.

Combining ability and the genetics of tiller number, days taken to flower and ear thickness were studied in top-cross progenies of pearl millet. General combining ability seemed to be more important for all the characters. The prevalence of epistatic variation, presumably of the type additive x additive, additive x dominance and dominance x dominance gene effects, with a non-significant contribution of additive and dominance components of genetic variance, was observed for tiller number. For days taken to flower, the importance of additive genetic variance was greater than that of the dominance component with directional dominance towards the recessive allele. However, for ear thickness, the existence of additive genetic variability together with the additive x additive type of genic interaction was suggested. An appreciable effect of epistasis on $$\hat D$$ andĤ 1 components was observed for tiller number, whereas this effect was not so marked for other characters.