Genes identified by visible mutant phenotypes show increased bias toward one of two subgenomes of maize.

ABSTRACT: Not all genes are created equal. Despite being supported by sequence conservation and expression data, knockout homozygotes of many genes show no visible effects, at least under laboratory conditions. We have identified a set of maize (Zea mays L.) genes which have been the subject of a disproportionate share of publications recorded at MaizeGDB. We manually anchored these "classical" maize genes to gene models in the B73 reference genome, and identified syntenic orthologs in other grass genomes. In addition to proofing the most recent version 2 maize gene models, we show that a subset of these genes, those that were identified by morphological phenotype prior to cloning, are retained at syntenic locations throughout the grasses at much higher levels than the average expressed maize gene,

SUBMITTER: Schnable JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3053395 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature