Characterization of introgression from the teosinte Zea mays ssp. mexicana to Mexican highland maize
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Agricultural Science, Evolutionary Studies, Genetics, Genomics, Plant Science
- Keywords
- Maize, Teosinte, Introgression, Local adaptation
- Copyright
- © 2019 Gonzalez-Segovia et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. Characterization of introgression from the teosinte Zea mays ssp. mexicana to Mexican highland maize. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27489v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27489v1
Abstract
Background. The spread of maize cultivation to the highlands of central Mexico was accompanied by substantial introgression from the endemic wild teosinte Zea mays ssp. mexicana, prompting the hypothesis that the transfer of beneficial variation facilitated local adaptation.
Methods. We used novel whole-genome sequence data to map regions of Zea mays ssp. mexicana introgression in three Mexican highland maize individuals. We generated a genetic linkage map and performed Quantitative Trait Locus mapping in an F2 population derived from a cross between lowland and highland maize individuals.
Results. Introgression regions ranged in size from several hundred base pairs to Megabase-scale events. Gene density within introgression regions was comparable to the genome as a whole, and over one thousand annotated genes were located within introgression events. Quantitative Trait Locus mapping identified a small number of loci linked to traits characteristic of Mexican highland maize.
Discussion. Although there was no strong evidence to associate quantitative trait loci with regions of introgression, we nonetheless identified many Mexican highland alleles of introgressed origin that carry potentially functional sequence variants. The impact of introgression on stress tolerance and yield in the highland environment remains to be fully characterized.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.