4.5. Candidate Gene Mining

The genetic linkage map could be aligned to the B. napus reference genome by BLAST. Based on the collinearity relationship between the genetic linkage map and the reference genome, genes within QTL regions were BLAST to the A. thaliana genome. These genes were further annotated with gene ontology (GO) terms, and genes belonging to related GO terms were regarded as potential candidate genes. For ADL and SG, the GO term was GO: 0009808 (lignin metabolic process). For Cel, the GO term was GO: 0030243 (cellulose metabolic process). For Hem, the GO term was GO: 0010410 (hemicellulose metabolic process). For BF and F, the GO term was GO: 0009505 (plant-type cell wall). For SSR, those encoding proteins containing NBS-LRR domains published from [35] were regarded as the most plausible candidate genes.