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Article|16 Jan 2024|OPEN
BL-Hi-C reveals the 3D genome structure of Brassica crops with high sensitivity 
Lupeng Zhang1 ,† , Ranze Zhao1 ,† , Jianli Liang1 ,† , Xu Cai1 , Lei Zhang1 , Huiling Guo1 , Zhicheng Zhang1 , Jian Wu1 , and Xiaowu Wang,1 ,
1State Key Laboratory of Vegetable Biobreeding, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
*Corresponding author. E-mail: wujian@caas.cn,wangxiaowu@caas.cn
Lupeng Zhang,Ranze Zhao and Jianli Liang contributed equally to the study.

Horticulture Research 11,
Article number: uhae017 (2024)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/hr/uhae017
Views: 40

Received: 01 Aug 2023
Accepted: 03 Jan 2024
Published online: 16 Jan 2024

Abstract

High-throughput Chromatin Conformation Capture (Hi-C) technologies can be used to investigate the three-dimensional genomic structure of plants. However, the practical utility of these technologies is impeded by significant background noise, hindering their capability in detecting fine 3D genomic structures. In this study, we optimized the Bridge Linker Hi-C technology (BL-Hi-C) to comprehensively investigate the 3D chromatin landscape of Brassica rapa and Brassica oleracea. The Bouquet configuration of both B. rapa and B. oleracea was elucidated through the construction of a 3D genome simulation. The optimized BL-Hi-C exhibited lower background noise compared to conventional Hi-C methods. Taking this advantage, we used BL-Hi-C to identify FLC gene loops in ArabidopsisB. rapa, and B. oleracea. We observed that gene loops of FLC2 exhibited conservation across ArabidopsisB. rapa, and B. oleracea. While gene loops of syntenic FLCs exhibited conservation across B. rapa and B. oleracea, variations in gene loops were evident among multiple paralogs FLCs within the same species. Collectively, our findings highlight the high sensitivity of optimized BL-Hi-C as a powerful tool for investigating the fine 3D genomic organization.