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Very little is known about how domestication was constrained by the quantitative genetic architecture of crop progenitors and how quantitative genetic architecture was altered by domestication. Yang et al. [C. J. Yang et al. , Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 116, 5643–5652 (2019)] drew multiple conclusions about how genetic architecture influenced and was altered by maize domestication based on one sympatric pair of teosinte and maize populations. To test the generality of their conclusions, we assayed the structure of genetic variances, genetic correlations among traits, strength of selection during domestication, and diversity in genetic architecture within teosinte and maize. Our results confirm that additive genetic variance is decreased, while dominance genetic variance is increased, during maize domestication. The genetic correlations are moderately conserved among traits between teosinte and maize, while the genetic variance–covariance matrices ( G -matrices) of teosinte and maize are quite different, primarily due to changes in the submatrix for reproductive traits. The inferred long-term selection intensities during domestication were weak, and the neutral hypothesis was rejected for reproductive and environmental response traits, suggesting that they were targets of selection during domestication. The G -matrix of teosinte imposed considerable constraint on selection during the early domestication process, and constraint increased further along the domestication trajectory. Finally, we assayed variation among populations and observed that genetic architecture is generally conserved among populations within teosinte and maize but is radically different between teosinte and maize. While selection drove changes in essentially all traits between teosinte and maize, selection explains little of the difference in domestication traits among populations within teosinte or maize.
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This content will become publicly available on June 24, 2026
An ancient origin of the naked grains of maize
Adaptation to novel environments requires genetic variation, but whether adaptation typically acts upon preexisting genetic variation or must wait for new mutations remains a fundamental question in evolutionary biology. Selection during domestication has been long used as a model to understand evolutionary processes, providing information not only on the phenotypes selected but also, in many cases, an understanding of the causal loci. For each of the causal loci that have been identified in maize, the selected allele can be found segregating in natural populations, consistent with their origin as standing genetic variation. The sole exception to this pattern is the well-characterized domestication locustga1(teosinte glume architecture1), which has long been thought to be an example of selection on a de novo mutation. Here, we use a large dataset of maize and teosinte genomes to reconstruct the origin and evolutionary history oftga1. We first estimated the age oftga1-maizeusing a genealogy-based method, finding that the allele arose approximately 42,000 to 49,000 y ago, predating the beginning of maize domestication. We also identifytga1-maizein teosinte populations, indicating that the allele can survive in the wild. Finally, we compare observed patterns of haplotype structure and mutational age distributions neartga1with simulations, finding that patterns neartga1in maize better resemble those generated under simulated selective sweeps on standing variation. These multiple lines of evidence suggest that maize domestication likely drew upon standing genetic variation attga1and cement the importance of standing variation in driving adaptation during domestication.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2307175
- PAR ID:
- 10630715
- Publisher / Repository:
- PNAS
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 122
- Issue:
- 25
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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