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MU ranks first in the country in funding from the National
Science Foundation for plant genomics research thanks to
faculty who are among the world’s top scientists in
wheat, corn and soybean research. Photo by MU Publications
and Alumni Communication
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Improving
Corn Crops
By Jeremy Diener
Thousands of years ago, humans in Mexico began
selectively breeding a large grass, known as teosinte, that would
eventually become a staple vegetable consumed around the world.
Today, teosinte's descendant is known as corn, and it hardly resembles
its ancestor. Now, a research team, including scientists at the
University of Missouri-Columbia, has uncovered the effect thousands
of years of selective breeding has had on corn's genetic makeup.
Michael McMullen, a geneticist with the U.S.
Department of Agriculture's Agricultural
Research Service Plant Genetics Research Unit in Columbia,
Mo., and an MU adjunct associate professor of agronomy,
along with MU researchers Steve Schroeder, Irie Vroh Bi (now at
Cornell University) and
Masanori Yamasaki, and researchers from the University
of California-Irvine and the University
of Wisconsin, recently identified many of the specific genes
that have contributed to the appearance, yield, grain quality
and other traits of corn as we know it today. The research can
help answer questions about the evolution of corn, and provide
insights that could lead to better, higher-yielding corn.
“This research has two important components,” McMullen said. “First, it offers the best description to
date of the domestication process of any crop plant. Second, we
have developed a new approach to genetic research that allows
us to focus on those genes that have allowed corn to develop from
teosinte into what it is today.”
By comparing the genetic material in today's
corn with that of teosinte, the researchers discovered that throughout
the years, humans have affected about 2 to 4 percent of the 700
genes examined in the study. The researchers believe the affected
genes are most likely linked to qualities such as growth and yield.
The research will be published in this week's issue of the journal
Science.
The researchers compared the genetic material
in modern corn with teosinte by using single-nucleotide polymporphisms
(SNPs), which are special genetic markers that demonstrate small
changes within a DNA sequence. This SNP process builds on earlier
research to map the entire corn genome, which was completed at
MU last year.
The research was funded by the National
Science Foundation's Plant Genome Project.
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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