The limits of selection during maize domestication (original) (raw)

• Letter
• Published: 18 March 1999

Nature volume 398, pages 236–239 (1999)Cite this article

• 3989 Accesses
• 554 Citations
• 7 Altmetric
• Metrics details

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 05 April 2001

Abstract

The domestication of all major crop plants occurred during a brief period in human history about 10,000 years ago1. During this time, ancient agriculturalists selected seed of preferred forms and culled out seed of undesirable types to produce each subsequent generation. Consequently, favoured alleles at genes controlling traits of interest increased in frequency, ultimately reaching fixation. When selection is strong, domestication has the potential to drastically reduce genetic diversity in a crop. To understand the impact of selection during maize domestication, we examined nucleotide polymorphism in teosinte branched1, a gene involved in maize evolution2. Here we show that the effects of selection were limited to the gene's regulatory region and cannot be detected in the protein-coding region. Although selection was apparently strong, high rates of recombination and a prolonged domestication period probably limited its effects. Our results help to explain why maize is such a variable crop. They also suggest that maize domestication required hundreds of years, and confirm previous evidence that maize was domesticated from Balsas teosinte of southwestern Mexico.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

$199.00 per year

only $3.90 per issue

Buy this article

• Purchase on SpringerLink
• Instant access to full article PDF

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Additional access options:

• Log in
• Learn about institutional subscriptions
• Read our FAQs
• Contact customer support

Similar content being viewed by others

References

1. Harlan, J. Crops and Man (Am. Soc. Agron., Madison, WI, (1992).
   Google Scholar
2. Doebley, J., Stec, A. & Gustus, C. Teosinte branched1 and the origin of maize: evidence for epistasis and the evolution of dominance. Genetics 141, 333–346 (1995).
   CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
3. Beadle, G. Teosinte and the origin of maize. J. Hered. 30, 245–247 (1939).
   Article Google Scholar
4. Galinat, W. The origin of maize as shown by key morphological traits of its ancestor, teosinte. Maydica 28, 121– 138 (1983).
   Google Scholar
5. Iltis, H. From teosinte to maize: the catastrophic sexual transmutation. Science 222, 886–894 ( 1983).
   Article ADS CAS PubMed Google Scholar
6. Smith, B. The Emergence of Agriculture (Freeman, New York, (1995 ).
   Google Scholar
7. Doebley, J., Stec, A. & Hubbard, L. The evolution of apical dominance in maize. Nature 386, 485–488 ( 1997).
   Article ADS CAS PubMed Google Scholar
8. Watterson, G. On the number of segregating sites in genetical models without recombination. Theor. Popul. Biol. 7, 188– 193 (1975).
   Article MathSciNet Google Scholar
9. Eyre-Walker, A., Gaut, R., Hilton, H., Feldman, D. & Gaut, B. Investigation of the bottleneck leading to the domestication of maize. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 95, 4441–4446 (1998).
   Article ADS CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
10. Buckler, E. & Holtsford, T. Zea systematics: ribosomal ITS evidence. Mol. Biol. Evol. 13, 612– 622 (1996).
    Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar
11. Goloubinoff, P., Paabo, S. & Wilson, A. Evolution of maize inferred from sequence diversity of an Adh2 gene segment from archaeological specimens. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 90, 1997–2001 (1993).
    Article ADS CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
12. Hanson, M. et al. Evolution of anthocyanin biosynthesis in maize kernels: the role of regulatory and enzymatic loci. Genetics 143 , 1395–1407 (1996).
    CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
13. Hilton, H. & Gaut, B. Speciation and domestication in maize and its wild relatives. Evidence from the globulin-1 gene. Genetics 150, 863–872 ( 1998).
    CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
14. Doebley, J., Goodman, M. & Stuber, C. Isoenzymatic variation in Zea (Gramineae). Syst. Bot. 9, 203–218 ( 1984).
    Article Google Scholar
15. Hudson, R., Kreitman, M. & Aguade, M. Atest of neutral molecular evolution based on nucleotide data. Genetics 116, 153– 159 (1987).
    CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
16. Stam, L. F. & Laurie, C. C. Molecular dissection of a major gene effect on a quantitative trait: the level of alcohol dehydrogenase expression in Drosophila melanogaster. Genetics 144, 1559–1564 (1996).
    CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
17. Kaplan, N., Hudson, R. & Langley, C. The “hitchhiking effect” revisited. Genetics 123, 887–899 ( 1989).
    CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
18. Okagaki, R. & Weil, C. Analysis of recombination sites within the maize waxy locus. Genetics 147, 815–821 (1997).
    CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
19. Patterson, G., Kubo, K., Shroyer, T. & Chandler, V. Sequences required for paramutation of the maize b gene map to a region containing the promoter and upstream sequences. Genetics 140, 1389–1406 (1995).
    CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
20. Dooner, H. & Martinez-Ferez, I. Recombination occurs uniformly within the bronze gene, a meiotic recombination hotspot in the maize genome. Plant Cell 9, 1633– 1646 (1997).
    Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
21. Xu, X., Hsia, A., Zhang, L., Nikolau, B. & Schnable, P. Meiotic recombination break points resolve at high rates at the 5′ end of a maize coding sequence. Plant Cell 7, 2151–2161 (1995).
    CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
22. Kimura, M. & Ohta, T. The average number of generation until fixation of a mutant gene in a finite population. Genetics 61, 763–771 (1969).
    CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar
23. Hudson, R. Properties of a neutral allele model with intragenic recombination. Theor. Popul. Biol. 23, 183–201 (1983).
    Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar
24. Bevan, M. et al. Analysis of 1.9 Mb of contiguous sequence from chromosome 4 of Arabidopsis thaliana. Nature 391, 485–488 (1998).
    Article ADS CAS PubMed Google Scholar
25. Doebley, J. & Stec, A. The structure of teosinte branched1 : a progress report. Maize Genet. Coop. News1. 73(1998).

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank E. Buckler, B. Gaut and J. Wendel for comments. This research was supported by the NSF and the Plant Molecular Genetics Institute of the University of Minnesota.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Plant Biology, University of Minnesota, St Paul, Minnesota, 55108 , USA
   Rong-Lin Wang, Adrian Stec, Lewis Lukens & John Doebley
2. Department of Genetics, Rutgers University, Piscataway, 08854-8082, New Jersey, USA
   Jody Hey

Authors

1. Rong-Lin Wang
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
2. Adrian Stec
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
3. Jody Hey
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
4. Lewis Lukens
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar
5. John Doebley
   You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence toJohn Doebley.

Rights and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Wang, RL., Stec, A., Hey, J. et al. The limits of selection during maize domestication.Nature 398, 236–239 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/18435

Download citation

• Received: 27 November 1998
• Accepted: 01 February 1999
• Issue Date: 18 March 1999
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/18435

This article is cited by