ARS | Publication request: MOLECULAR AND FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY OF MAIZE

Submitted to: Current Opinion in Plant Biology
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: January 31, 2006
Publication Date: March 15, 2006
Citation: Buckler Iv, E.S., Gaut, B.S., Mcmullen, M.D. 2006. Molecular and functional diversity of maize. Current Opinion in Plant Biology. 9:172-176.

Technical Abstract: Over the last 10000 years, man has used the rich genetic diversity of the maize genome as the raw material for domestication and subsequent crop improvement. Recent research efforts have made tremendous strides toward characterizing this diversity: structural diversity appears to be largely mediated by helitron transposons, patterns of diversity are yielding insights into the number and type of genes involved in maize domestication and improvement, and functional diversity experiments are leading to allele mining for future crop improvement. The development of genome sequence and germplasm resources are likely to further accelerate this progress. This review summarizes the scientific research that contributes to our current understanding of maize genomic diversity.