期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2011
卷号：108
期号：3
页码：1088-1092
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1013011108
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：The last two decades have seen important advances in our knowledge of maize domestication, thanks in part to the contributions of genetic data. Genetic studies have provided firm evidence that maize was domesticated from Balsas teosinte (Zea mays subspecies parviglumis), a wild relative that is endemic to the mid- to lowland regions of southwestern Mexico. An interesting paradox remains, however: Maize cultivars that are most closely related to Balsas teosinte are found mainly in the Mexican highlands where subspecies parviglumis does not grow. Genetic data thus point to primary diffusion of domesticated maize from the highlands rather than from the region of initial domestication. Recent archeological evidence for early lowland cultivation has been consistent with the genetics of domestication, leaving the issue of the ancestral position of highland maize unresolved. We used a new SNP dataset scored in a large number of accessions of both teosinte and maize to take a second look at the geography of the earliest cultivated maize. We found that gene flow between maize and its wild relatives meaningfully impacts our inference of geographic origins. By analyzing differentiation from inferred ancestral gene frequencies, we obtained results that are fully consistent with current ecological, archeological, and genetic data concerning the geography of early maize cultivation.
