Liting Wang

Hainan Institute of Biotechnology, Haikou, 570206, Hainan, China
Author    Correspondence author
Maize Genomics and Genetics, 2024, Vol. 15, No. 4   
Received: 18 Jun., 2024    Accepted: 31 Jul., 2024    Published: 15 Aug., 2024

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This study explores the evolutionary dynamics within the genus Zea by analyzing complete plastid genomes. The research sequenced plastomes from five Zea species, identifying 193 indels and 15 inversions, with tandem repeat indels being the most prevalent microstructural changes. Divergence times were estimated, revealing that the stem lineage of all Zea species diverged approximately 176 000 years before present (YBP), with mutation rates ranging from 1.7E-8 to 3.5E-8 changes per site per year. Additionally, the study examined plastome diversity within Zea mays, identifying 124 polymorphic loci and 27 distinct haplotypes, which reflect the geographic structuring of nuclear gene pools in South American maize landraces. The findings underscore the non-uniform rates of microstructural changes despite close taxonomic relationships and provide a comprehensive framework for understanding evolutionary processes at low taxonomic levels. This research contributes significantly to the phylogenomic knowledge of Zea, confirming previous mitochondrial and nuclear data analyses and highlighting the importance of plastid genome studies in elucidating evolutionary histories.

Plastid genome; Zea evolution; Microstructural changes; Phylogenomics; Divergence times