Many of the species we consume today are not endemic species of the ancient world known as Eurasia. Some of these species, whose origins are based on the American continent, are as follows; sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.), potato (Solanum tuberosum L.), pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo L.), tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.), maize (Zea mays L.). The arrival of these species in Europe resulted from an overseas discovery made by the Spanish navigator Christopher Columbus in 14921.
These newly introduced species led to great development in the scientific world. Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus laid the foundation of taxonomy by classifying living things according to hierarchy. Linnaeus used Latin, the language of science, in these classifications. This classification was as follows; For the corn plant, the words “Zea” denoting the genus of the plant, and “mays” denoting the type of plant were used2. After this classification, it was called corn or maize in the colloquial language, and Zea mays in the language of science.
The ancestors of maize were weeds, but after the agricultural revolution, it was improved and reached its present large-grained form. Maize is a plant spicy that can grow in many environments and climatic conditions, and it contains many narrow and long leaves, up to 2.5 meters in height. What makes maize special is that it does not resemble self-pollinating plants but shows a crossover feature like animals. Although its genetic structure is like humans, it contains the most important features of plant genetics such as self-crossing and producing homozygotes. Maize has a structure that makes controlled crossing easy. The reason why this is easy is due to the different positioning of male reproductive cells and female reproductive cells (male reproductive cells are on the tassels, and female reproductive cells are in the middle part of the leaves)3. The ease of controlled crossing has made the maize plant very efficient for genetic studies. The reason for this is to follow the reproductive cycle of the plant and the ancestors of the gamete cells used during fertilization using the controlled crossing.
The most extensively studied model organism species among many cereal plants in the last century is maize. Researches continue about maize, which plays an important role in plant domestication, genome evolution, pest resistance, heterosis, quantitative inheritance and comparative genomics, and many more researches4. Maize is a highly heterozygous plant exhibiting an extremely high sequence of polymorphisms. Numerous SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) markers have been identified through whole genome sequencing, reduced complexity genomic sequencing, or transcriptome sequencing of inbred maize. SNP polymorphisms occur on average every 44-75 bp. This level of polymorphism is 10 to 20 times higher than most animal species. In addition, individual maize lines were found to have many structural differences, such as copy number variations and presence/absence polymorphisms5.
Maize, which is a species that we meet later than other species, has been a model organism on which many studies have been carried out, despite our late introduction.
References:
- ARSLAN, N. (2017). Kökeni Amerika kıtası olan genetik kaynaklarımız. N. ARSLAN içinde, TÜRKTOB (54-59). Ankara.
- Staller, J. (2009). Maize Cobs and Cultures: History of Zea mays L. Springer Science & Business Media.
- Natalie J Nannas, R. K. (2015). Working with Maize. Genetics, Volume 199, Issue 3 (pp.655–669). America.
- Strable, J., & Scanlon, M. J. (2009). Maize (Zea mays): a model organism for basic and applied research in plant biology. Cold spring harbor protocols, 2009(10), pdb-emo132.
- Ganal, M. W., Durstewitz, G., Polley, A., Bérard, A., Buckler, E. S., Charcosset, A., … & Falque, M. (2011). A large maize (Zea mays L.) SNP genotyping array: development and germplasm genotyping, and genetic mapping to compare with the B73 reference genome. PloS one, 6(12), e28334.
Figure References:
- World Grain, Kenya facing maize shortage crisis, Receive date: 11.12.2022 on 22.34 https://www.world-grain.com/articles/12154-kenya-facing-maize-shortage-crisis
- Strable, J., & Scanlon, M.J. (2009). Maize (Zea mays): a model organism for basic and applied research in plant biology. Cold Spring Harbor protocols, 2009 10, pdb.emo132 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Maize-(Zea-mays)%3A-a-model-organism-for-basic-and-in-Strable-Scanlon/ec4c1e44856796d4edd7d4f1c37d7bc696a7ee83
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