玉米比较基因组学研究进展

Advances in Comparative Genomics Involving Maize

玉米是世界上重要的粮食作物 ,长期以来一直是遗传学、分子生物学和基因组学研究的重点对象。近十多年来 ,涉及到玉米的基因组学研究取得了很大进展。不仅在利用比较遗传作图方法方面发现玉米和其它植物 (尤其是禾谷类作物 )的基因组存在广泛的共线性 ,在较小的DNA区域上也发现存在微共线性。尽管还存在一些共线性的例外情形 ,进一步的比较基因组学研究将深入阐明玉米基因组的结构和进化 ,并把这些研究成果应用于基因发掘中。

Maize is one of the most important cereals in the world and has been one of the research foci in genetics, molecular biology and genomics for a long time. In the recent decades comparative genomics involving maize has made great progress. Extensive macrocolinearity has been found between maize genomes and other plant species's genomes, especially cereals' genomes, using comparative genetic mapping. Meanwhile, microcolinearity also exists in local genomic regions. Although there are a few exceptions of synteny, further studies on comparative genomics will elucidate the structure and evolution of the maize genome and the accompanying results will be applied in gene discovery.