Plantae Curiosity

Domesticated genes can be identified and isolated by using technologies as quantitative trait locus ( QTL) analysis, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and whole genome resequencing studies. GWAS identifies significant associations between genes and phenotypic traits by using markers, focusing on single-nucleotide polymorphisms  (SNPs) in the genome and linkage disequilibrium to provide full coverage (Meyer and Purugganan, 2013) . Quantitative Trait Locus (QTL) mapping (or Linkage mapping)  is a technique that is among the first used in the study of domesticated traits (Doebley et al., 2006; Gross and Olsen, 2010). According to Meyer and Purugganan (2013), QTL is defined as a “genomic region with a gene (or multiple linked genes) that contains mutations which result in phenotypic variation in populations” (Meyer and Purugganan, 2013). And the main goal of the QTL mapping is to help study less understood phenotypes by characterizing (number, location, and impact...

Domestication is a type of animal-plant co-evolution in which morphological and physiological changes were made to certain species, being an example of mutualism (Purugganan and Fuller, 2009). Although us, humans, made the biggest impact on plant domestication, that doesn’t necessarily mean we were the only ones practicing it, or even that we were the first. Some studies show that animals like ants and beetles also take part in domestication processes, particularly in fungus cultures, beginning in some cases roughly 67 million years ago (Farrel et al ., 2001; Schultz and Brady, 2008). However, well-documented cases, as the domestications of crops were performed to meet the human needs and, sometimes, even undergoing processes that made plants dependent on humans to survive (Doebley et al ., 2006), unlike its wild ancestors. Plant domestication began 10.000 years ago with a selection made by farmers, of certain characteristics, known as domestication syndrome (Poncet et al ., 2004)...