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The Potential Role of Genetic Assimilation during Maize Domestication

Anne Lorant, Sarah Pedersen, Irene Holst, Matthew B. Hufford, Klaus Winter, Dolores Piperno, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/105940
Anne Lorant
1Dept. of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
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Sarah Pedersen
2Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
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Irene Holst
3Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama
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Matthew B. Hufford
2Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
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Klaus Winter
3Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama
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Dolores Piperno
3Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama
4Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, USA
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Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra
1Dept. of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
5Genome Center and Center for Population Biology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
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ABSTRACT

Domestication research has largely focused on identification of morphological and genetic differences between extant populations of crops and their wild relatives. Little attention has been paid to the potential effects of environment despite substantial known changes in climate from the time of domestication to modern day. Recent research, in which maize and teosinte (i.e., wild maize) were exposed to environments similar to the time of domestication, resulted in a plastic induction of domesticated phenotypes in teosinte and little response to environment in maize. These results suggest that early agriculturalists may have selected for genetic mechanisms that cemented domestication phenotypes initially induced by a plastic response of teosinte to environment, a process known as genetic assimilation. To better understand this phenomenon and the potential role of environment in maize domestication, we examined differential gene expression in maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) and teosinte (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis) between past and present conditions. We identified a gene set of over 2000 loci showing a change in expression across environmental conditions in teosinte and invariance in maize. In fact, overall we observed both greater plasticity in gene expression and more substantial re-wiring of expression networks in teosinte across environments when compared to maize. While these results suggest genetic assimilation played at least some role in domestication, genes showing expression patterns consistent with assimilation are not significantly enriched for previously identified domestication candidates, indicating assimilation did not have a genome-wide effect.

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Posted February 03, 2017.
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The Potential Role of Genetic Assimilation during Maize Domestication
Anne Lorant, Sarah Pedersen, Irene Holst, Matthew B. Hufford, Klaus Winter, Dolores Piperno, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra
bioRxiv 105940; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/105940
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The Potential Role of Genetic Assimilation during Maize Domestication
Anne Lorant, Sarah Pedersen, Irene Holst, Matthew B. Hufford, Klaus Winter, Dolores Piperno, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra
bioRxiv 105940; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/105940

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