Genetic and Developmental Analyses of the Systematics of Maize

了解发育过程的遗传基础是现代生物学的一个基本问题。系统生物学的研究可以通过阐明一个物种向另一个物种转变过程中发生的形态发生变化的遗传基础，为研究发育提供重要的新见解。由于形态上的巨大差异可以在相对较短的时间内出现，因此形态多样化的生物体可以保持相互干扰，从而可以进行遗传和发育的综合分析。这种现象的一个例子涉及玉米(Zea mays ssp。尽管它们是完全相互干扰的，但在成虫形态上却有很大的不同。提出的研究将表征玉米和大刍草之间巨大形态差异的遗传和发育基础。这将通过创建控制这些生物体之间形态差异的基因的近等基因系来完成。这些近等基因系将基本上是纯大刍动物，除了已经引入的玉米基因组的单个区域。将对近等基因系进行分析，以确定玉米基因组单个区域对形态发生的影响。精细绘制对形态发生有显著影响的基因组区域，将用于研究这些区域是否包含单个主位点或多个连锁位点，每个位点都有单独的小影响。

Understanding the genetic basis of developmental processes is a fundamental concern of modern biology. Research in systematic biology can provide important new insights into development by elucidating the genetic basis of changes in morphogenesis that occurred during the transformation of one species into another. Because profound differences in morphology can arise over relatively short periods of time, morphologically diverse organisms can remain interfertile, and thus be amenable to combined genetic and developmental analyses. One example of this phenomenon involves maize (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis), which differ dramatically in adult morphology despite the fact that they are fully interfertile. The proposed research will characterize the genetic and developmental basis of the dramatic morphological differences between maize and teosinte. This will be accomplished by the creation of near-isogenic lines for the genes controlling the morphological differences between these organisms. These near-isogenic lines will be essentially pure teosinte except for single regions of the maize genome that have been introduced into them. The near-isogenic lines will be analyzed to determine the effects of the single regions of the maize genome on morphogenesis. Fine-mapping of regions of the genome with dramatic effects on morphogenesis will be used to investigate whether these regions contain single major loci or several linked loci, each with individually small effects.