I have many favorite topics which I don't blog much or at all. One of these, taken from my time in Mexico, is the history of corn. I very much enjoyed this recent article on the topic. There is this good bit:
The sequencing revealed that an astonishing 85 percent of the corn
genome is made up of "transposable elements" — short stretches of DNA,
some perhaps descended from viral invaders — that show evidence of
having moved around in corn's 10 chromosomes at some point in
evolution. Their peregrinations provided the basis for new genes, or
the on-and-off regulation of existing ones…
And this:
Corn's diversity of traits has been largely maintained, despite a
century of intensive breeding. Modern corn produces cobs that range
from the familiar farm-stand variety to lopsided baseballs and fat
pencils and have a rainbow of kernel colors. Varieties of corn can have
a greater genetic difference between them than what exists between
human beings and chimpanzees.
And this:
Walbot, the Stanford geneticist, speculates that this unusual diversity
survived because corn cultivation spread along a north-south axis. That
exposed the species to a much greater variety of environmental
conditions — temperature, day length, rainfall, altitude — than if it
had spread along an east-west axis, as did wheat.
There is extraordinary genetic information and power in corn. I am always willing to read another book on the history of corn and its breeding.
I like the corns on Diego Rivera murals, and I found the article interesting. But there’s something a little tongue-in-cheek about this post. “Mobile genetic elements — the “jumping genes” that won corn geneticist Barbara McClintock a Nobel Prize in 1983″. The invention of pop corn, right? Or was that earlier?
The genome is really a tremendous resource. Palomero genome is around 400 million nucleotides smaller and contains about 20% less repetitive DNA than B732. “You can contain three Arabidopsis genomes or one rice genome in the size difference between those two maize genomes
Any grain that can make Tamales, Popcorn, Tortillas, Bugles and more certainly deserves more study.
It provides an important sense of perspective to remember that maize is, in some ways, a more complicated organism than we are:
“The genome has 50,000–60,000 genes scattered among the 2.5 billion bases—molecules that form DNA—that make up its 10 chromosomes. (By comparison, the human genome contains about 2.9 billion bases and 26,000 genes.)” (from Wikipedia)
TYLER, WHERE ARE YOU? FOR A LONG TIME YOU HAVE BEEN LINKING TO ALL SORTS OF IDEAS SUPPORTED BY SOME “SCIENTIFIC” RESEARCH, BUT TODAY YOU HAVE FAILED TO LINK TO “CLIMATEGATE”, WHAT MAY BECOME THE GREATEST FRAUD IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE, ECONOMICS AND POLITICS.
I LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR HANSONIAN ANALYSIS OF “CLIMATEGATE” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. IN THE MEANTIME LET US CELEBRATE THE FIRST DAY IN THE POSTWARMALIST WORLD.
“our enormously nourished population”
An argument by gould somehow twisted into a dig against fat chicks. (roissy has game!)
You like the history of corn? I think it’s absolutely fascinating. Any insightful thoughts into nixtamalization?
“I have many favorite topics which I don’t blog much or at all.”
This is interesting, given how wide-ranging MR is.
I, too, have favorite topics I don’t blog about, mainly because I doubt many other people care. Flight routes, for example (which airlines fly where, and changes in those routes).
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