RESEARCH ARTICLE · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · 2011

Ancient nucleic acids from maize: a review

Gabriel Dorado Pérez, Teresa E. Rosales Tham, Fernando Luque, Francisco Javier Sánchez Sánchez-Cañete, Isabel Rey, Inmaculada Mora-Jiménez, Arturo Morales Muñiz, Manuel Gálvez, Jesús Saiz Galdós, Adela Sánchez, Víctor F. Vásquez Sánchez, Pilar Hernández

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Abstract

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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