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Science 14 November 2003:
Vol. 302. no. 5648, pp. 1206 - 1208
DOI: 10.1126/science.1089056
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Reports

Early Allelic Selection in Maize as Revealed by Ancient DNA

Viviane Jaenicke-Després,1 Ed S. Buckler,2 Bruce D. Smith,3 M. Thomas P. Gilbert,4 Alan Cooper,4 John Doebley,5 Svante Pääbo1*

Maize was domesticated from teosinte, a wild grass, by ~ 6300 years ago in Mexico. After initial domestication, early farmers continued to select for advantageous morphological and biochemical traits in this important crop. However, the timing and sequence of character selection are, thus far, known only for morphological features discernible in corn cobs. We have analyzed three genes involved in the control of plant architecture, storage protein synthesis, and starch production from archaeological maize samples from Mexico and the southwestern United States. The results reveal that the alleles typical of contemporary maize were present in Mexican maize by 4400 years ago. However, as recently as 2000 years ago, allelic selection at one of the genes may not yet have been complete.

1 Max Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
2 United States Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service and Department of Genetics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
3 Archaeobiology Program, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA.
4 Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Centre, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
5 Laboratory of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: paabo{at}eva.mpg.de

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