Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on October 18, 2007.

Genetics, Vol. 177, 2335-2347, December 2007, Copyright © 2007
doi:10.1534/genetics.107.077958

Quantitative Trait Loci for the Circadian Clock in Neurospora crassa

Tae-Sung Kim^*, Benjamin A. Logsdon, Sohyun Park^*, Jason G. Mezey and Kwangwon Lee^*,1

^* Department of Plant Pathology and Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853

¹ Corresponding author: Department of Plant Pathology, 201 Bradfield Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.
E-mail: kl272{at}cornell.edu

Neurospora crassa has been a model organism for the study of circadian clocks for the past four decades. Among natural accessions of Neurospora crassa, there is significant variation in clock phenotypes. In an attempt to investigate natural allelic variants contributing to quantitative variation, we used a quantitative trait loci mapping approach to analyze three independent mapping populations whose progenitors were collected from geographically isolated locations. Two circadian clock phenotypes, free-running period and entrained phase, were evaluated in the 188 F₁ progeny of each mapping population. To identify the clock QTL, we applied two QTL mapping analyses: composite interval mapping (CIM) and Bayesian multiple QTL analysis (BMQ). When controlling false positive rates 0.05, BMQ appears to be the more sensitive of the two approaches. BMQ confirmed most of the QTL from CIM (18 QTL) and identified 23 additional QTL. While 13 QTL colocalize with previously identified clock genes, we identified 30 QTL that were not linked with any previously characterized clock genes. These are candidate regions where clock genes may be located and are expected to lead to new insights in clock regulation.

International Access Link

Online ISSN: 1943-2361  Print ISSN: 0016-6731
Copyright 2009 by the Genetics Society of America
phone: 412-268-1812   fax: 412-268-1813   email: genetics-gsa{at}andrew.cmu.edu