title: Updating the 'crop circle'.
abstract: Comparative analyses unravel the relationships between genomes of related species. The most comprehensive comparative dataset obtained to date is from the grass family, which contains all of the major cereals. Early studies aimed to identify chromosomal regions that have remained conserved over long evolutionary time periods, but in recent years, researchers have focused more on the extent of colinearity at the DNA-sequence level. The latter studies have uncovered many small rearrangements that disturb colinearity in orthologous chromosome regions. In part, genomes derive their plasticity from genome- and gene-amplification processes. Duplicated gene copies are more likely to escape selective constraints and thus move to other regions of the genome, where they might acquire new functions or become deleted. These rearrangements will affect map applications. The most popular applications, especially since the complete rice genomic sequence has been available, are the use of comparative data in the generation of new markers to tag traits in other species and to identify candidate genes for these traits. The isolation of genes underlying orthologous traits is the first step in conducting comparative functional studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, and Department of Plant Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, USA. kdevos@uga.edu
authors.forename: Katrien M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Devos
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000235:genetics*; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000235:genetics; D018744:DNA, Plant / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D002523:Edible Grain / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005784:Gene Amplification; D020440:Gene Duplication; D018745:Genome, Plant; D012275:Oryza / Q000235:genetics; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics*; D011123:Polyploidy
chemical_list: D018076:DNA, Complementary; D018744:DNA, Plant