Clubroot significantly affects plants of the Brassicaceae family and is one of the main diseases causing serious losses in B. napus yield. Few studies have investigated the clubroot-resistance mechanism in B. napus. Identification of clubroot-resistant genes may be used in clubroot-resistant breeding, as well as to elucidate the molecular mechanism behind B. napus clubroot-resistance. We used t...

Arabidopsis thaliana (the model dicotyledonous plant) is closely related to Brassica crop species. Genome collinearity, or conservation of marker order, between Brassica napus (oilseed rape) and A. thaliana was assessed over a 7.5-Mbp region of the long arm of A. thaliana chromosome 4, equivalent to 30 cM. Estimates of copy number indicated that sequences present in a single copy in the haploid...

Plant disease resistance (R) genes confer race-specific resistance to pathogens and are genetically defined on the basis of intra-specific functional polymorphism. Little is known about the evolutionary mechanisms that generate this polymorphism. Most R loci examined to date contain alternate alleles and/or linked homologs even in disease-susceptible plant genotypes. In contrast, the resistance...

Allopolyploid species contain more than two sets of related chromosomes (homoeologs) that must be sorted during meiosis to ensure fertility. As polyploid species usually have multiple origins, one intriguing, yet largely underexplored, question is whether different mechanisms suppressing crossovers between homoeologs may coexist within the same polyphyletic species. We addressed this question u...

Sclerotinia rot caused by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is one of the most serious diseases of oilseed rape. To understand the resistance mechanisms in the Brassica napus to S. sclerotiorum, comparative disease progression, histological and proteomic studies were conducted of two B. napus genotypes (resistant cv. Charlton, susceptible cv. RQ001-02M2). At 72 and 96 h post inoculation (hpi), lesion si...

The fungus Leptosphaeria maculans (L. maculans) is the causal agent of blackleg disease of canola/oilseed rape (Brassica napus) worldwide. We previously reported cloning of the B. napus blackleg resistance gene, LepR3, which encodes a receptor-like protein. LepR3 triggers localized cell death upon recognition of its cognate Avr protein, AvrLm1. Here, we exploited the Nicotiana benthamiana model...

Phytohormones play pivotal roles in the response of plants to various biotic and abiotic stresses. Boron (B) is an essential microelement for plants, and Brassica napus (B. napus) is hypersensitive to B deficiency. However, how auxin responds to B deficiency remained a dilemma for many years and little is known about how other phytohormones respond to B deficiency. The identification of B-effic...

Determining the frequency of crop-wild transgene flow under field conditions is a necessity for the development of regulatory strategies to manage transgenic hybrids. Gene flow of green fluorescent protein (GFP) and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) transgenes was quantified in three field experiments using eleven independent transformed Brassica napus L. lines and the wild relatives, B. rapa L. and ...

Allopolyploidization with the merger of the genomes from different species has been shown to be associated with genetic and epigenetic changes. But the maintenance of such alterations related to one parental species after the genome is extracted from the allopolyploid remains to be detected. In this study, the genome of Brassica napus L. (2n = 38, genomes AACC) was extracted from its intergener...

Oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.), which has yellow flowers, is both an important oil crop and a traditional tourism resource in China, whereas the Orychophragmus violaceus, which has purple flowers, likely possesses a candidate gene or genes to alter the flower colour of oilseed rape. A previously established B. napus line has a particular pair of O. violaceus chromosomes (M4) and exhibits slig...