Gale M D, Devos K M
John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Colney, Norwich NR4 7UH, Norfolk, UK.
Science. 1998 Oct 23;282(5389):656-9. doi: 10.1126/science.282.5389.656.
The past 10 years have seen the discovery of unexpected levels of conservation of gene content and gene orders over millions of years of evolution within grasses, crucifers, legumes, some trees, and Solanaceae crops. Within the grasses, which include the three 500-million-ton-plus-per-year crops (wheat, maize, and rice), and the crucifers, which include all the Brassica crops, colinearity looks good enough to do most map-based cloning only in the small genome model species, rice and Arabidopsis. Elsewhere, knowledge gained in a few major crops is being pooled and applied across the board. The extrapolation of information from the well-studied species to orphan crops, which include many tropical species, is providing a solid base for their improvement. Genome rearrangements are giving new insights into evolution. In fact, comparative genetics is the key that will unlock the secrets of crop plants with genomes larger than that of humans.
在过去十年中，人们发现在禾本科植物、十字花科植物、豆科植物、一些树木以及茄科作物长达数百万年的进化过程中，基因含量和基因顺序的保守程度出人意料。在禾本科植物（包括年产量超过5亿吨的三种作物——小麦、玉米和水稻）以及十字花科植物（包括所有芸苔属作物）中，共线性程度足以在小基因组模式物种水稻和拟南芥中进行大多数基于图谱的克隆。在其他地方，从一些主要作物中获得的知识正在汇总并广泛应用。将信息从经过充分研究的物种外推到包括许多热带物种在内的孤生作物，为它们的改良提供了坚实基础。基因组重排为进化提供了新的见解。事实上，比较遗传学是解开基因组比人类还大的作物植物秘密的关键。
