Who could have predicted maize geneticists would be so interested in maize genes? The entry I posted last night on Purple plant1 and Colored aleurone1 easily received more traffic in its first day on the site (it’s still got a long way to go before it catches long term readership attractors like water chestnuts and the NIPGR tomatoes), than any entry since the heady days of the maize genome release back in November.
The relationships of the four grass species with sequenced genomes. The branches are NOT to scale with how long ago the species split apart. Green stars represent whole genome duplications. The most important one to notice in the one in the ancestry of maize/corn. That duplication means that every region in sorghum, rice, or brachypodium is equivalent to two different places in the maize genome, one descended from each of the two copies of the genome that existed after the duplication.
And this morning the dataset I drew that example from, 464 classical maize genes mapped onto the maize genome assembly plus syntenic orthologs in up to four grass species: sorghum, rice, brachypodium, and the other region of the maize genome created by the maize whole genome duplication (technically syntenic homeologs since we started in maize to begin with, by the principle is the same), went out to the maize genetics community (thank you MaizeGDB!).
A postdoc in our lab tells me more people have visited CoGe today than any day on record (and we hit that mark before noon!).
Anyway, thank you guys, it’s great to feel appreciated!