Timeline for How to turn teosinte into corn?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 18, 2017 at 19:32 | vote | accept | BearCode | ||
| May 18, 2017 at 19:20 | history | edited | BearCode | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 230 characters in body
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| May 17, 2017 at 6:58 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackBiology/status/864736848001871873 | ||
| May 16, 2017 at 23:38 | answer | added | Bryan Krause♦ | timeline score: 8 | |
| May 16, 2017 at 23:28 | comment | added | user24284 | Yes, I read that, and actually "the least maize-like" was the part that made me asking you about the similarity. | |
| May 16, 2017 at 23:28 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | It's of course possible that, being a strain that doesn't hybridize well with maize, it might actually more teosinte-like than the original strains that were eventually bred to corn. Not my area of expertise I'm afraid. | |
| May 16, 2017 at 23:27 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | From the link I gave: "Teosinte from this area is the least maize-like of the Mexican annual teosintes and it only rarely hybridizes with maize (Wilkes 1967, 1977). Being free of maize "contamination" is important for my selection experiment because I don't want to merely filter out maize genes that were introgressed into teosinte, but to select natural teosinte variants and thereby move the phenotype in the direction of maize." I don't know if its possible to know how similar this strain is to the original, just that it isn't contaminated with modern corn. | |
| May 16, 2017 at 23:25 | comment | added | user24284 | Nice! It brings up the question: is this teosinte she/he is using the same (kind of) teosinte from before first human migration to Americas? By the way, when I wrote my comment I was think about the Russian foxes, on which I wrote an study (unfortunately I can't share, because it is on other language). | |
| May 16, 2017 at 23:23 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | @GerardoFurtado FYI someone at my institution is trying to do this see here but expects only fairly minor changes over 30 generations. But your broader point is well-taken. I believe some Russian scientists domesticated a fox within just a few generations, for example. I would say there is a difference between initial domestication and the extreme changes we have built into plants over thousands of years of agriculture. | |
| May 16, 2017 at 23:21 | comment | added | user24284 | Agrred. My point is that people in general, specially laymen, tend to think about domestication as something that requires thousands and thousands of generations to happen. However, domestication of plants (wheat, hemp, corn...) or animals (wolf, sheep, cattle) took fewer generations than what people suppose, sometimes a very small number. | |
| May 16, 2017 at 23:20 | review | Close votes | |||
| May 16, 2017 at 23:47 | |||||
| May 16, 2017 at 23:18 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | @GerardoFurtado Even modern corn (not counting GMO) is quite a bit different from corn 200 years ago. I guess I agree that it doesn't take as many generations before you would classify the plant 'corn' rather than 'teosinte' but it seems like it took at least 1000 years to get to that point, with thousands of years further selection since then to get closer to what we are familiar with today. | |
| May 16, 2017 at 23:10 | comment | added | user24284 | @BryanKrause "repeat over a few thousand generations"... one needs way less than that. | |
| May 16, 2017 at 22:32 | review | First posts | |||
| May 16, 2017 at 22:54 | |||||
| May 16, 2017 at 22:30 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | Breed together the plants that have any properties that seem more like modern corn, like bigger or more accessible kernels, stir gently, find a cure for aging, repeat over a few thousand generations. | |
| May 16, 2017 at 22:22 | history | asked | BearCode | CC BY-SA 3.0 |