TITLE:
Recent Advances in Understanding Plant Heterosis
AUTHORS:
Shouqian Feng, Xiaoliu Chen, Shujing Wu, Xuesen Chen
KEYWORDS:
Heterosis, Genetic Factor, Epigenetic Factor
JOURNAL NAME:
Agricultural Sciences,
Vol.6 No.9,
September
23,
2015
ABSTRACT: Although heterosis is widely utilized in crop production, its genetic and molecular basis is still elusive. It is arguably that heterosis arises in crosses between genetically and/or epigenetically distinct individuals. Various genetic models have been proposed to explain heterosis, such as dominance and overdominance hypothesis. With the recent advancements in functional genomics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics-related technologies, systems-level approaches have been adopted to understand the molecular basis of heterosis. In this review, we gather a brief account of findings from various studies in order to better understand the genetic and molecular basis of heterosis.