Patterns of selection and tissue-specific expression among maize domestication and crop improvement loci

Hufford, K. M., Canaran, P., Ware, D. H., McMullen, M. D., Gaut, B. S. (July 2007) Patterns of selection and tissue-specific expression among maize domestication and crop improvement loci. Plant Physiology, 144 (3). pp. 1642-1653. ISSN 0032-0889

Abstract

The domestication of maize (Zea mays sp. mays) from its wild progenitors represents an opportunity to investigate the timing and genetic basis of morphological divergence resulting from artificial selection on target genes. We compared sequence diversity of 30 candidate selected and 15 reference loci between the three populations of wild teosintes, maize landraces, and maize inbred lines. We inferred an approximately equal ratio of genes selected during early domestication and genes selected during modern crop breeding. Using an expanded dataset of 48 candidate selected and 658 neutral reference loci, we tested the hypothesis that candidate selected genes in maize are more likely to have transcriptional functions than neutral reference genes, but there was no overrepresentation of regulatory genes in the selected gene dataset. Electronic northern analysis revealed that candidate genes are significantly overexpressed in the maize ear relative to vegetative tissues such as maize shoot, leaf, and root tissue. The maize ear underwent dramatic morphological alteration upon domestication and has been a continuing target of selection for maize yield. Therefore, we hypothesize that genes targeted by selection are more likely to be expressed in tissues that experienced high levels of morphological divergence during domestication and crop improvement.

Item Type: Paper
Uncontrolled Keywords: GREEN-REVOLUTION MAYS L. TOMATO FRUIT EVOLUTION TEOSINTE ORIGIN ZEA MUTATIONS PLANT DNA
Subjects: organism description > plant > maize
bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > morphological divergence
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Ware lab
Depositing User: CSHL Librarian
Date: July 2007
Date Deposited: 14 Nov 2011 18:02
Last Modified: 23 Feb 2017 19:21
PMCID: PMC1914116
Related URLs:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/23045

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