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Ancient nucleic acids from maize - A review
The maize (Zea mays) is a widely cultivated American cereal grass, being domesticated from the teosinte in southwestern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. The maize was a cornerstone on the development and preponderance of the Maya and Aztec civilizations, as well as other ancient American cultures. Form...
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Published in: | Archaeobios 2011-01, Vol.1 (5), p.21-28 |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | eng ; spa |
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | The maize (Zea mays) is a widely cultivated American cereal grass, being domesticated from the teosinte in southwestern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. The maize was a cornerstone on the development and preponderance of the Maya and Aztec civilizations, as well as other ancient American cultures. Formerly, the maize remains were analyzed from a morphological point of view. Fortunately, the development of molecular biology methodologies has allowed the study of ancient DNA (aDNA). Reports of uniformity and lack of polymorphism of maize aDNA could be due to a biased selection process favoring homozygosity. The available results suggest that the current maize gene pool is millions of years old, and that the current domesticated varieties are derived from several wild ancestral populations. On the other hand, the new second- and third-generation nucleic acid sequencing platforms allow to sequence full genomes in a cost-efficient way, and most importantly from an archaeological point of view, they even allow the sequencing of ancient genomes. The possibility to analyze the ancient RNA (aRNA) is also exciting. The study ancient nucleic acids from maize using the new sequencing technologies opens the door to understand not only the evolution and domestication of such cereal grass, but also to decipher the mysteries of some American cultures from a multi disciplinary point of view. |
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ISSN: | 1996-5214 1996-5214 |