Patterns of genomic changes with crop domestication and breeding

• Published in: Current opinion in plant biology 2015-04, Vol.24, p.47-53
• Main Authors: Shi, Junpeng, Lai, Jinsheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Crops, Agricultural - genetics; Genome, Plant; Plant Breeding
• ISSN: 1369-5266; 1879-0356
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pbi.2015.01.008

•Next-generation sequencing has generated an enormous amount of genome-wide population genomics data for crop domestication and breeding studies.•Large numbers of selective sweeps have been identified with varying levels of reduction of genetic diversity.•Selection along with domestication and breeding can happen in both genic and non-genic regulatory regions.•Epigenomic changes have played an important role in crop domestication and breeding. Crop domestication and further breeding improvement have long been important areas of genetics and genomics studies. With the rapid advancing of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, the amount of population genomics data has surged rapidly. Analyses of the mega genomics data have started to uncover a previously unknown pattern of genome-wide changes with crop domestication and breeding. Selection during domestication and breeding drastically reshaped crop genomes, which have ended up with regions of greatly reduced genetic diversity and apparent enrichment of potentially beneficial alleles located in both genic and non-genic regions. Increasing evidences suggest that epigenetic modifications also played an important role during domestication and breeding.