Inference of subgenomic origin of BACs in an interspecific hybrid sugarcane cultivar by overlapping oligonucleotide hybridizations

Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) breeders in the early 20th century made remarkable progress in increasing yield and disease resistance by crossing Saccharum spontaneum L., a wild relative, to Saccharum officinarum L., a traditional cultivar. Modern sugarcane cultivars have approximately 71%–83% of their chromosomes originating from S. officinarum, approximately 10%–21% from S. spontaneum, and approximately 2%–13% recombinant or translocated chromosomes. In the present work, C0t-based cloning and sequencing (CBCS) was implemented to further explore highly repetitive DNA and to seek species-specific repeated DNA in both S. officinarum and S. spontaneum. For putatively species-specific sequences, overlappping oligonucleotide probes (overgos) were designed and hybridized to BAC filters from the interspecific hybrid sugarcane cultivar ‘R570’ to try to deduce parental origins of BAC clones. We inferred that 12 967 BACs putatively originated from S. officinarum and 5117 BACs from S. spontaneum. Another 1103 BACs were hybridized by both species-specific overgos, too many to account for by conventional recombination, thus suggesting ectopic recombination and (or) translocation of DNA elements. Constructing a low C0t library is useful to collect highly repeated DNA sequences and to search for potentially species-specific molecular markers, especially among recently diverged species. Even in the absence of repeat families that are species-specific in their entirety, the identification of localized variations within consensus sequences, coupled with the site specificity of short synthetic overgos, permits researchers to monitor species-specific or species-enriched variants.