SummaryAlthough forward‐genetics‐metabolomics methods such as mGWAS and mQTL have proven effective in providing myriad loci affecting metabolite contents, they are somehow constrained by their respective constitutional flaws such as the hidden population structure for GWAS and insufficient recombinant rate for QTL. Here, the combination of mGWAS and mQTL was performed, conveying an improved statistical power to investigate the flavonoid pathways in common wheat. A total of 941 and 289 loci were, respectively, generated from mGWAS and mQTL, within which 13 of them were co‐mapped using both approaches. Subsequently, the mGWAS or mQTL outputs alone and their combination were, respectively, utilized to delineate the metabolic routes. Using this approach, we identified two MYB transcription factor encoding genes and five structural genes, and the flavonoid pathway in wheat was accordingly updated. Moreover, we have discovered some rare‐activity‐exhibiting flavonoid glycosyl‐ and methyl‐transferases, which may possess unique biological significance, and harnessing these novel catalytic capabilities provides potentially new breeding directions. Collectively, we propose our survey illustrates that the forward‐genetics‐metabolomics approaches including multiple populations with high density markers could be more frequently applied for delineating metabolic pathways in common wheat, which will ultimately contribute to metabolomics‐assisted wheat crop improvement.

中文翻译：

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超越途径：利用小麦群体的组合作图加速候选类黄酮的识别和酶特性的新探索

摘要尽管mGWAS和mQTL等前向遗传学代谢组学方法已被证明可以有效提供影响代谢物含量的无数位点，但它们在某种程度上受到各自的结构缺陷的限制，例如GWAS的隐藏群体结构和QTL重组率不足。在这里，将 mGWAS 和 mQTL 结合起来，为研究普通小麦中的类黄酮途径提供了改进的统计能力。mGWAS 和 mQTL 分别生成了总共 941 个和 289 个位点，其中 13 个位点使用这两种方法进行了共同定位。随后，分别利用 mGWAS 或 mQTL 输出及其组合来描绘代谢途径。利用这种方法，我们鉴定了两个MYB转录因子编码基因和五个结构基因，并相应更新了小麦中的类黄酮途径。此外，我们还发现了一些具有罕见活性的黄酮类糖基转移酶和甲基转移酶，它们可能具有独特的生物学意义，利用这些新颖的催化能力提供了潜在的新育种方向。总的来说，我们建议我们的调查表明，包括具有高密度标记的多个群体的前向遗传学代谢组学方法可以更频繁地应用于描绘普通小麦的代谢途径，这最终将有助于代谢组学辅助小麦作物改良。