The genetic basis of cytoplasmic male sterility and fertility restoration in wheat

Hybrid wheat varieties give higher yields than conventional lines but are
difficult to produce due to a lack of effective control of male fertility
in breeding lines. One promising system involves
the Rf1 and Rf3 genes that restore
fertility of wheat plants carrying Triticum timopheevii-type
cytoplasmic male sterility (T-CMS). By genetic mapping and comparative
sequence analyses we
identified Rf1 and Rf3 candidates that
could restore normal pollen production in transgenic wheat plants carrying
T-CMS. We show that Rf1 and Rf3 bind to the
mitochondrial orf279 transcript and induce cleavage,
preventing expression of the CMS trait. The identification of restorer
genes in wheat is an important step towards the development of hybrid
wheat varieties based on a CMS-Rf system. The characterisation of
their mode of action brings new insights into the molecular basis of CMS
and fertility restoration in plants. This dataset includes
transcript count and coverage data from 2 RNA-seq experiments looking at
gene expression in various male-sterile or male-fertile wheat lines
examined in the course of this research.