Chromosome recognition and pairing during meiosis in wheat in the framework of breeding

Trabajo presentado en la SEB 2021 Annual Conference (The Society for Experimental Biology), celebrada online del 29 de junio al 8 de julio de 2021.Wheat is one of the most important food crops in the world. Thus, it is vital for geneticists and plant breeders to understand its genome organization (allohexaploid; AABBDD; 2n=6x=42). Particularly, in a plant breeding framework is fundamental and has a big influence on fertility to shed light on how homologous chromosomes (equivalent chromosomes from the same genome) specifically recognize each other to pair at the beginning of meiosis, the cellular process to generate gametes in sexually reproducing organisms. Terminal regions of the chromosomes, which include telomeres and subtelomeres, play a key role on chromosome recognition and pairing at the beginning of meiosis in wheat. Accordingly, unzipping how these chromosome regions can contribute to chromosome specificity/pairing at the onset of meiosis could provide tools to facilitate chromosome manipulation in interspecific hybrids or genetic crosses, which are developed to transfer desirable agronomic traits from related species into wheat. The importance of terminal chromosome regions on recognition and pairing at the onset of meiosis will be summarised.Peer reviewe