Buckler Edward S, Gaut Brandon S, McMullen Michael D
USDA-ARS; Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2006 Apr;9(2):172-6. doi: 10.1016/j.pbi.2006.01.013. Epub 2006 Feb 3.
Over the past 10,000 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 transposable elements, 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.
在过去一万年里，人类利用玉米基因组丰富的遗传多样性作为驯化及后续作物改良的原材料。近期的研究工作在描述这种多样性方面取得了巨大进展：结构多样性似乎很大程度上由helitron转座元件介导，多样性模式正为了解参与玉米驯化和改良的基因数量及类型提供线索，功能多样性实验正导向为未来作物改良进行等位基因挖掘。基因组序列和种质资源的发展可能会进一步加速这一进程。
