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Agriculture

Neolithic genetic engineering

Nature volume 398, pages 194–195 (1999)Cite this article

Of all human inventions, none has had a more profound effect on our history — and on the biosphere as a whole — than agriculture. The agricultural revolution, which began in several regions of the world about 10,000 years ago, allowed food to be produced and stored. This, in turn, permitted the development of large communities, leading to centralization of political power and the emergence of complex societies, so paving the way for large-scale warfare, imperialism, industrialization and almost every other aspect of history as we know it. This momentous development relied on the genetic manipulation of only a handful of plants by early farmers. One of these, maize (or corn), which is now the second largest crop worldwide, was domesticated in middle America around 7,500 years ago from teosinte. This grass looks so different from maize that, until genetic studies showed their close relationship, the two were classified in different genera. For several years, John Doebley and collaborators have hunted the genes that were selected during maize domestication, and they report their latest findings on page 236 of this issue1.

Almost ten years ago, the Doebley group crossed teosinte and maize and showed2 that only five genetic regions are responsible for the main morphological differences between the two. One of these regions encodes a gene called teosinte branched1 (tb1)3. The maize variant of tb1 causes the side branches of teosinte to shorten and carry ears instead of tassels. Doebley and collaborators4 cloned tb1, and they have now investigated what effects domestication had on variation in this gene.

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Figure 1: Genetic variation in and around the teosinte branched (tb1) gene.
Figure 2

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References

  1. Wang, R.-L., Stec, A., Hey, J., Lukens, L. & Doebley, J. Nature 398, 236–239 (1999).

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  2. Doebley, J., Stec, A., Wendel, J. & Edwards, M. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 87, 9888–9892 (1990).

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  3. Doebley, J., Stec, A. & Gustus, C. Genetics 141, 333–346 (1995).

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  4. Doebley, J., Stec, A. & Hubbard, L. Nature 386, 485–488 (1997).

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  1. the Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Inselstrasse 22, D-04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Svante Pääbo

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  1. Svante Pääbo
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Pääbo, S. Neolithic genetic engineering. Nature 398, 194–195 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/18315

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