Reference "Plant comparative genetics after 10 years"

Reference ID

6938

Title

Plant comparative genetics after 10 years

Source

Science, 1998, vol. 282, pp. 656-659

Authors (2)

Gale-M-D

Devos-K-M

Abstract

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.