Molecular basis of Heterosis: A Review

Adhikari, Shree Krishna/87

Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science, Department of Plant Breeding, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Heterosis is the phenomenon of superiority of character of the offspring than the mid parent value in terms of fertility, yield, speed of development and other QTL character. The concept of heterosis is very used in the genetic study for the crop production and evolution of the plants. Though up to now the molecular genetic basis of the heterosis is undefined, the genetic work on this sector has made somehow successful result and the molecular genetic basis of heterosis is going to be coined soon. There are some classical hypotheses to explain the heterosis as dominance and over dominance. These hypothesis are not genetically linked to the phenomenon but somehow can be explained through them. Dominance model said that the deleterious alleles from a parent are masked by the superior alleles that are present in the opposite parents through complementation. But this concept do have criticism like if as explained in hypothesis would be true then why not it is possible to isolate the superior homozygous alleles in the progeny. It couldnt be due to the linkage of the superior alleles with deleterious alleles. But somehow as explained by hypothesis, complementation of the deleterious and superior alleles also results the heterosis in the progeny but the sole mechanism of the heterosis is not underlined by this hypothesis. Another hypothesis is over dominance that explains that the alleles from different parents interact and perform the better performance than the mid-parent value. If over-dominance is the main cause for heterosis, then there should be an over-expression of certain genes in the heterozygous offspring compared to the homozygous parents and homozygous parents should have very inferior expression which is not observed. To explain the heterosis on the basis of molecular genetic principle the two main concepts have been explained though it is up to now is not accepted universally. The first concept is that when the two different alleles of various genes are brought together, there is a combined allelic expression that results the heterosis. Heterosis gives the appearance of being more resistant to artificial selection rather quality of inbred lines themselves. The second concept is that the combination of different alleles produces an interaction that causes gene expression in the hybrid to deviate relative to the mid-parent prediction which might be due to the gene allelic interactions. To support these two concepts of heterosis many observation have been interpreted. These observations concludes that heterosis is not due to the complementation but it is due to the selection of alleles at the right set of loci that produces the best combination in hybrids to bring about heterosis. In the observations it is said that vigor improves with the greater number of distinct genomes present. The complementation of the combination of different numbers of genes that are to be the cause of heterosis is quite complex and quite low. The release from negative allele effect on the vigor by identical alleles could account for progressive heterosis. In the tetraploid plant, when selfing, the homozygosity will attain later than the diploid plants so the inbreeding depressioln should be expected to be faster in diploid plants than tetraploid but it wont be. Tetraploid plants do have faster inbreeding depression than the diploid. The allelic dosages effect shifts more quickly than the homozygosity during selfing. So the allelic dosage effect has major role in heterosis. The increasing number of identical alleles appears to have a negative dosage effect on vigor. Heterosis is the result of different alleles present at appropriate loci in the specific arrangement that may have the allelic dosage effect or combined allelic expression that control the quantitative traits.