Segregation distortion in Arabidopsis C24/Col-0 and Col-0/C24 recombinant inbred line populations is due to reduced fertility caused by epistatic interaction of two loci

A new large set of reciprocal recombinant inbred lines (RILs) was created between the Arabidopsis accessions Col-0 and C24 for quantitative trait mapping approaches, consisting of 209 Col-0 x C24 and 214 C24 x Col-0 F-7 RI lines. Genotyping was performed using 110 evenly distributed framework single nucleotide polymorphism markers, yielding a genetic map of 425.70 cM, with an average interval of 3.87 cM. Segregation distortion (SD) was observed in several genomic regions during the construction of the genetic map. Linkage disequilibrium analysis revealed an association between a distorted region at the bottom of chromosome V and a non-distorted region on chromosome IV. A detailed analysis of the RILs for these two regions showed that an SD occurred when homozygous Col-0 alleles on chromosome IV coincided with homozygous C24 alleles at the bottom of chromosome V. Using nearly isogenic lines segregating for the distorted region we confirmed that this genotypic composition leads to reduced fertility and fitness.