An exceptionally high nucleotide and haplotype diversity and a signature of positive selection for the eIF4E resistance gene in barley are revealed by allele mining and phylogenetic analyses of natural populations.

In barley, the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) gene situated on chromosome 3H is recognised as an important source of resistance to the bymoviruses Barley yellow mosaic virus and Barley mild mosaic virus. In modern barley cultivars two recessive eIF4E alleles, rym4 and rym5, confer different isolate-specific resistances. In this study the sequence of eIF4E was analysed in 1090 barley landraces and non-current cultivars originating from 84 countries. An exceptionally high nucleotide diversity was evident in the coding sequence of eIF4E but not in either the adjacent MCT-1 gene or the sequence related eIF(iso)4E gene situated on chromosome 1H. Surprisingly, all nucleotide polymorphisms detected in the coding sequence of eIF4E resulted in amino acid changes. A total of 47 eIF4E haplotypes were identified and phylogenetic analysis using maximum likelihood provided evidence of strong positive selection acting on this barley gene. The majority of eIF4E haplotypes were foun...