1. Section of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0116, USA
2. Dipartimento di Scienze Biomolecolari e Biotecnologie, Università degli Studi di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy
3. Laboratory of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
4. Graduate School of Agriculture and Life Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan
5. Crop Genetics Research, Pioneer-A DuPont Company, Johnston, Iowa 50131, USA
6. Present address: Biological Sciences Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California 93407, USA

Correspondence to: Robert J. Schmidt¹ Email: rschmidt@ucsd.edu
Sequences are deposited in GenBank under accession numbers AY683001, AY683002 and AY645947. Other accession numbers are listed in Supplementary Table 1.

Abstract

The architecture of higher plants is established through the activity of lateral meristems—small groups of stem cells formed during vegetative and reproductive development. Lateral meristems generate branches and inflorescence structures, which define the overall form of a plant^{1, 2, 3}, and are largely responsible for the evolution of different plant architectures³. Here, we report the isolation of the barren stalk1 gene, which encodes a non-canonical basic helix–loop–helix protein required for the initiation of all aerial lateral meristems in maize. barren stalk1 represents one of the earliest genes involved in the patterning of maize inflorescences, and, together with the teosinte branched1 gene⁴, it regulates vegetative lateral meristem development. The architecture of maize has been a major target of selection for early agriculturalists and modern farmers, because it influences harvesting, breeding strategies and mechanization. By sampling nucleotide diversity in the barren stalk1 region, we show that two haplotypes entered the maize gene pool from its wild progenitor, teosinte, and that only one was incorporated throughout modern inbreds, suggesting that barren stalk1 was selected for agronomic purposes.

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