小麦是世界上广泛种植的主要粮食作物,养活了全世界35%以上的人口。获取高质量的基因组图谱对于推动小麦基础理论和遗传育种研究至关重要。然而,庞大而复杂的基因组一度使小麦基因组测序被认为是“不可能完成的任务”。随着高通量测序和组装技术的成熟,近年来多个小麦基因组序列图谱陆续发布,序列组装质量日臻完善。仅最近两年就公布了5个不同倍性的小麦参考基因组序列,包括两个二倍体祖先种乌拉尔图小麦(Triticum urartu, AA)和粗山羊草(Aegilops tauschii, DD)、野生和栽培四倍体二粒小麦(T. turgidum ssp. dicoccoides, BBAA)和六倍体普通小麦(T. aestivum, BBAADD)。其中,作为多倍体小麦A亚基因组供体的乌拉尔图小麦基因组测序和分析是由中国科学院遗传与发育生物学研究所牵头完成。本文主要对小麦A基因组的结构解析和进化分析等方面的研究进展进行了综述,以期为相关领域的科研人员提供参考信息,促进小麦的基础和应用研究。

Wheat is one of the main food crops and widely grown in the world. It feeds more than 35% of the world's population. Obtaining high-quality genome sequences of wheat is important for its basic and breeding researches. However, the large and complex genome of wheat once led to its genome sequencing as an "impossible task". Recently, with the development of high-throughput sequencing and assembly technology, many wheat genome sequences have been released, and their sequencing and assembly quality is being improved continuously. In the last two years, five wheat reference genomes with different ploidy levels have been published, including two diploid ancestors Triticum urartu (AA) and Aegilops tauschii (DD), wild and cultivated tetraploid wheat T. turgidum ssp. dicoccoides (BBAA) and hexaploid wheat T. aestivum (BBAADD). Among them, the sequencing and analysis of the T. urartu genome, a donor of polyploid wheat A subgenome, was led by the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In this review, we summarize the research progress on structure and evolution analyses of the T. urartu genome to provide some valuable information for promoting the basic and applied researches of wheat.