Distribution of Nonstructural Variation between Wheat Cultivars along Chromosome Arm 6Bp: Evidence from the Linkage Map and Physical Map of the Arm

Metaphase I (MI) pairing of homologous chromosomes in wheat intercultivar hybrids (heterohomologous chromosomes) is usually reduced relative to that within the inbred parental cultivars (euhomologous chromosomes). It was proposed elsewhere that this phenomenon is caused by polymorphism in nucleotide sequences (nonstructural chromosome variation) among wheat cultivars. The distribution of this polymorphism along chromosome arm 6Bp (=6BS) of cultivars Chinese Spring and Cheyenne was investigated. A population of potentially recombinant chromosomes derived from crossing over between telosome 6Bp of Chinese Spring and Cheyenne chromosome 6B was developed in the isogenic background of Chinese Spring. The approximate length of the Chinese Spring segment present in each of these chromosomes was assessed by determining for each chromosome the interval in which crossing over occurred (utilizing the rRNA gene region, a distal C-band and the gliadin gene region as markers). The MI pairing frequencies of these chromosomes (only the complete chromosomes were used) with the normal Chinese Spring telosome 6Bp were determined. These were directly proportional to the length of the euhomologous segment. The longer the incorporated euhomologous segment the better was the MI pairing. This provided evidence that the heterohomologous chromosomes are differentiated from each other in numerous sites distributed throughout the arm.—The comparison of the physical map of arm 6Bp with the linkage map showed a remarkable distortion of the linkage map; no crossing over was detected in the proximal 68% of the arm. A population of 49 recombinant chromosomes was assayed for recombination within the rRNA gene region, but none was detected. No new length variants of the nontranscribed spacer separating the 18S and 26S rRNA genes were detected either.