Allelic variation of row type gene Vrs1 in barley and implication of the functional divergence

Abstract

Domesticated barleys produce either two- or six- rowed spikes, whereas their immediate wild ancestor, wild barley, is monomorphic for the two-rowed type. The six-rowed spike is a recessive character, conditioned by a major gene at the vrs1 locus. The wild-type (two-rowed) gene includes a homeodomain-leucine zipper I (HD-Zip I) sequence (HvHox1). The correspondence between peptide sequence and some spike variants was studied by re-sequencing the HvHox1 sequence across a large sample of both wild and domesticated accessions.