Abstract
Modern maize (2n = 20) is functionally diploid, and its chromosomes pair normally, forming 10 bivalents during meiosis. Sufficient genomic rearrangement has occurred that no two maize chromosomes are homologous across their entire lengths. Yet comparisons of genetic maps, duplicate gene sequences, and later genome assemblies revealed maize is descended from a polyploid ancestor which lived 5–12 million years ago. In the time since that polyploid ancestor lived 8,000–9,000 genes conserved at syntenic positions in other grass species have been reduced to single copy in maize while 4,000–5,000 genes are still retained as homologous gene pairs. The consequences of this polyploidy are continuing to resolve in modern maize accessions. With a wide range of data sets generated by an active research community, maize is an unparalleled model for the in silico study of the changes in genome structure, gene content, and gene regulation that a successful polyploidy brings about in a plant lineage.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Vincent Li, a high school intern in the Freeling lab from Project SEED, for identifying the gene fragment shown in Fig. 8.3 and Addie M. Thompson for critical reading of an early version of this text. Funding provided by NSF Plant Genome Research Program grant 0701871 to MF and a Chang-Lin Tien Graduate Fellowship to JCS.
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Schnable, J.C., Freeling, M. (2012). Maize (Zea Mays) as a Model for Studying the Impact of Gene and Regulatory Sequence Loss Following Whole-Genome Duplication. In: Soltis, P., Soltis, D. (eds) Polyploidy and Genome Evolution. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31442-1_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31442-1_8
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