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Domesticar genomas: Agricultura y Biología

en el siglo XXI

José M. Díaz-Mínguez Universidad de Salamanca

29 JUNE 2007 VOL 316 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org1830

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JALÈS, FRANCE—In his lab in a 12th century

fortress that now houses the Archéorient

research center here, archaeobotanist

George Willcox pops the top off a plastic

capsule f illed with tiny black particles,

spills them out into a petri dish, and puts the

dish under a binocular microscope. Magni-

fied 50 times, the particles leap into focus.

They are char red fragments of wheat

spikelets from a 10,500-year-old archaeo-

logical site in Turkey called Nevali Çori.

Wheat spikelets are attached to the central

stalk of the wheat ear and carry the seeds,

or grain, that humans grind into flour.

“Look at the scar at the lower end of the

spikelet, where it has broken off,” Willcox

says. The scar is jagged—a hallmark of

domesticated wheat. It’s a sign that the

spikelet did not come off easily but

detached only when harvested, so the plant

probably needed human help to disperse its

seeds. “This is the earliest evidence for

domesticated wheat in the world.”

Willcox spills the contents of a second

capsule into another dish. The scars are

round and smooth, showing that these

spikelets easily detached and dispersed their

stores of grain. “This is wild wheat, also

from Nevali Çori,” he says. So in the earliest

cultivated f ields, wild and domesticated

wheat grew in close proximity.

The scarred spikelets under Willcox’s

microscope represent one simple, physical

sign of a very complicated process: the

rise of agriculture. Farming was revolu-

tionary in its implications for humanity,

providing the food surpluses that later

fueled full-blown civilization, with all of

its blessings and curses. Domestication—

def ined as the physical changes plants

undergo as they adapt to human cultiva-

tion—was key to this transformation. It

allowed former foragers to increasingly

control when, where, and in what quanti-

ties food plants were grown rather than

simply depending upon the vagaries of

nature. And unlike other aspects of early

agriculture, such as whether a seed was

planted or simply gathered by human

hands, “domestication is visible” in the

archaeological record, says archaeologist

Timothy Denham of Monash University in

Clayton, Australia.

Over the past decade, a string of high-

profile papers has pinpointed the time and

place of the first domestication of crops,

ranging from wheat and maize

to figs and chili peppers. Now

researchers are beginning to fit

all of these into a larger story of

worldwide plant domestication.

At Nevali Çori, where wild

and domesticated plants grew

in the same fields and perhaps

even exchanged genes, Willcox

and colleagues conclude that

full domestication might have

taken thousands of years rather

than the 200 years or fewer that

some archaeobotanists had

predicted. “They could not

have gone from one kind of

economy to another in just a

few generations,” Willcox says

of the early cultivators. “These

things happened gradually.”

A decade or so ago, most archaeologists

saw the advent of agriculture as an abrupt

break with the hunting-and-gathering

lifestyle on which hominids had relied for

millions of years. Researchers thought that

domesticated crops appeared very soon

after people began to cultivate fields, first

in the Near East as early as 13,000 years

ago, then somewhat later in a handful of

other regions.

But the new data suggest that the road

from gathering wild plants to cultivating

them and finally domesticating them was

long and winding (see chart on p. 1835),

unfolding over many millennia. “If the

agricultural revolution is supposed to be

evidence for a punctuated change in human

cultural evolution, it seems to have taken

quite a long time to get to the punctuation

point,” says archaeobiologist Melinda

Seeking Agriculture’sAncient Roots As they pinpoint when and where many crops were first domesticated,

researchers are painting a new picture of how—and perhaps why—

humans began to change their relationship to plants

Research field. George Willcox

grows cereals for science at Jales.

Published by AAAS

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Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution in

Washington, D.C. Douglas Kennett of the

University of Oregon, Eugene, agrees.

“Agriculture was not a revolution,” he says.

“People were messing about with plants for

a very long time.”

Clues to how this slow transition took

place are accumulating rapidly. An alliance

of archaeologists and geneticists armed

with new techniques for probing plant

genomes and analyzing microscopic plant

remains (see sidebar on p. 1834) has been

tracing the route to farming in much closer

detail. In the Near East, for example,

researchers are finding that domestication

itself happened a bit later than had been

thought, although humans apparently culti-

vated wild cereals for thousands of years

before plants showed physical changes.

Meanwhile, new research in the Americas

has pushed the dates for the first domestica-

tion of squash and other crops back to about

10,000 years ago, making the roots of farm-

ing in the New World almost as deep as

those in the Old World.

Moreover, new archaeological work

shows that plants were domesticated

independently in many parts of the globe.

There is now convincing evidence for at

least 10 such “centers of origin,” including

Africa, southern India, and even New

Guinea (see map on p. 1833). “All around

the world, people took this very new step

and started cultivating plants,” which led to

their domestication, says Smithsonian

archaeobotanist Dolores Piperno. The rush

of new data could help eventually solve the

puzzle of why agriculture arose in the first

place—a riddle archaeologists have been

trying to solve for nearly a century.

Wild plants: The long goodbyeIn his writings about evolution, Charles

Darwin argued that domestication was a

clear example of selection in action. By cul-

tivating plants—growing them deliber-

ately—humans intentionally or unintention-

ally select certain traits. Today, researchers

def ine domestication as the genetically

determined physical and physiological

changes a plant has undergone in response to

human behavior. “Domestication is the

result of genetic changes that have evolved

because of cultivation,” explains archaeolo-

gist Dorian Fuller of the Institute of Archae-

ology at University College London (UCL).

These alterations make up what botanists

call the “domestication syndrome”: signs that

plants have adapted to humans and that

researchers eagerly seek at archaeological

sites. In cereals such as wheat and barley, the

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 316 29 JUNE 2007 1831

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Wheat’s-eye view. Crop plants

adapted slowly to human cultivation,

evolving on a time scale of millennia

rather than centuries.

Published by AAAS

29 JUNE 2007 VOL 316 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org1832

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syndrome includes the tendency for spikelets

to stay on the stalk until they are harvested, as

seen in the jaggedly scarred specimens found

at Nevali Çori, plus larger seeds and a thinner

seed coat that allows easier germination. (It

also includes less visible traits, such as simul-

taneous flowering times.)

Once humans began to cultivate plants,

how long did domestication take? In 1990,

the pendulum swung toward a rapid sce-

nario after archaeobotanist Gordon Hillman

of UCL and plant biologist Stuart Davies

of Cardiff University in Wales plugged

data from cultivation experiments into a

computer model. They concluded that

domestication might have occurred within

200 years and perhaps in as few as 20 to

30 years, assuming, as many archaeologists

have, that early farmers used sickles to har-

vest their crops. Sickles presumably would

have strongly selected for spikelets that

stayed on the stalk until harvest, because

those that dropped earlier would be lost and

not replanted. “It was possible to put

together a nice story, that agriculture

appeared fairly abruptly,” says botanist

Mark Nesbitt of the Royal Botanic Gardens,

Kew, in Richmond, U.K.

Before long, however, new data began to

raise doubts about this story. For example, at

Jalès, Willcox and colleagues conducted

experiments in a nearby field, cultivating

wild varieties of wheat, barley, and rye to

deduce how quickly domesticated forms

might evolve. The answer: not very fast. No

matter how researchers harvested the grains,

a good portion of the easy-to-detach wild

spikelets fell to the ground and germinated

to sprout a new generation of wild wheat.

Meanwhile, a remarkable discovery in

Israel also suggested a long run-up to

domestication. In 1989, a team led by Dani

Nadel of the University of Haifa in Israel

began excavating a site called Ohalo II on

the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee.

The site was radiocarbon-dated to 23,000

years ago, when the last Ice Age was still in

full frost and at least 10,000 years before

the earliest domesticated plants. Excava-

tors found the remains of huts, plus a burial

and several hearths. More than 90,000 indi-

vidual plant remains were recovered,

including acorns, pistachios, wild olives,

and lots of wild wheat and barley. But

“there is not a single domesticated species

at this site,” says team member Ehud Weiss

of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan,

Israel, nor any evidence that the people of

Ohalo II were cultivating the cereals rather

than just gathering them.

To their surprise, however, the researchers,

in collaboration with Piperno, found micro-

scopic remains of barley and possibly wheat

on a large stone implement. They concluded

that the inhabitants of Ohalo II had ground the

grains to make flour and possibly also baked

dough in one of the ovenlike hearths.

“Ohalo II is an important warning to

archaeologists,” Fuller says. “We need to

abandon some of our long-held assump-

tions that as soon as people began to use

cereals, they would begin to [cultivate and]

domesticate them.”

More recently, some researchers have

begun taking a second look at just when

domesticated plants first showed up in the

Near East. For decades, excavators had

pegged this transformation to an archaeolog-

ical period that began about 11,800 years

ago and is marked by the first permanently

settled villages. There were a few claims for

even earlier dates, such as a few relatively

large seeds of rye at Abu Hureyra in Syria,

dated to about 13,000 years ago, and which

Hillman argued were domesticated. But in a

2002 survey, Nesbitt found that the earliest

Near Eastern villages lacked definitive evi-

dence of domesticated cereals, although

wild plants were plentiful. Unambiguous

signs of domestication didn’t turn up until

about 10,500 years ago, in larger settlements

with different architecture and a much more

complex social organization, he concluded.

“There is no current evidence for domes-

ticated plants in the [first settled villages],”

Weiss agrees. “But it was probably a very

energetic period, when people all across the

region were playing with cultivation of wild

plants.” And once plants were domesticated,

making farming more efficient and inten-

sive, this way of life apparently exploded

across the Near East, as large farming vil-

lages sprung up like mushrooms and people

quickly formed trade and communication

networks over the entire region.

The notion of a long run-up to domestica-

tion also gets support from new findings by

Willcox and archaeobotanist Ken-ichi Tanno

of the Research Institute for Humanity and

Nature in Kyoto, Japan. They examined

charred wheat spikelets from four sites of dif-

ferent ages in Syria and Turkey. There was a

clear trend over nearly 3000 years: Earlier

sites had fewer domesticated spikelets and

later sites had more. At 10,500-year-old

Nevali Çori, only about 10% of the spikelets

were clearly domesticated, whereas 36% were

domesticated at 8500-year-old el-Kerkh in

Syria and 64% at 7500-year-old Kosak

Shamali, also in Syria, Willcox and Tanno

reported last year in Science (31 March 2006,

p. 1886). These results suggest that wild

varieties were only gradually replaced by

domesticated ones, they say.

“Domestication was the culmination of a

lengthy process in which plants were culti-

vated but retained their wild phenotypes,”

says geneticist Terry Brown of the Univer-

sity of Manchester in the U.K. “Early farm-

ers were receiving the benefits of agriculture

long before domestication evolved.” Even

Hillman says that he is “very impressed”

with the analysis, although it contradicts his

previous work: “[Domestication] probably

did take this long.”

But why? Fuller, in an article earlier

this year in the Annals of Botany, suggests

that humans may have exerted weak rather

than strong selection pressure on their

crops. “Weaker selection means domesti-

cation would take longer, while stronger

selection means it would happen more

quickly,” he explains.

And there are many ways that early farm-

ers’ behavior might have weakened selec-

tion. For example, Fuller questioned whether

sickles were actually used in early harvest-

ing. Other methods, such as picking already-

fallen spikelets from the ground, would not

have selected for spikelets that stay on the

stalk. Although sickles date as far back as

15,000 years ago, no domesticated plants

show up before 10,500 years ago. So the first

sickles may have been used for other tasks,

such as cutting reeds for floor matting, rather

than harvesting grains, Fuller argued.

Willcox favors an alternative explana-

tion: During hard years, early farmers

replenished their seed stocks with wild vari-

eties, thus slowing domestication. Only

when farmers began planting domesticated

plants far ther from the wild stands—

All in the family. Maize and its wild ancestor teosinte(left) are closely related despite their differences.

Published by AAAS

physically and genetically isolating them

from their wild ancestors—did the process

speed up, he says. Reproductive isolation of

domesticated and wild plants could have

acted as a “trigger,” agrees Manchester’s

Brown, spurring increasing proportions of

domesticates as farming spread across the

Near East. Eventually, says Weiss, sowing,

tilling, and harvesting “create[d] these arti-

ficial environments that lead to domestica-

tion. … It meant totally new ideas and a

totally new way of life.”

New World, new paradigmAt the same time that archaeolo-

gists are concluding that Old

World crops were fully domes-

ticated a little later than once

thought, recent discoveries are

pushing domestication in the

New World back, way back.

Not so long ago, researchers

saw little evidence for farming of

crops such as squash, maize, and

manioc before about 5000 years

ago. “Some archaeologists

thought little of importance had

taken place in these tropical

forests,” Piperno says. “We didn’t

have the data.” Researchers now

have new methods to identify

microscopic bits of poorly pre-

served tropical plants, and genetic studies can

date when domesticated lineages split from

wild ancestors.

“We were misled by what was not pre-

served and what we could not see,” says

anthropologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt

University in Nashville, Tennessee. “These

people had a very sophisticated knowledge

of the plants that were out there.”

Archaeologists began to see more clearly

back in 1997, when the Smithsonian’s Bruce

Smith radiocarbon-dated domesticated seeds

and other fragments of pepo squash seeds

from a cave near Oaxaca,

Mexico, to nearly 10,000

years ago (Science, 9 May

1997, pp. 894 and 932). The

signs of domestication were

clear: The seeds were larger

and the stems and rinds

thicker than those of

closely related wild squash

that still grows in the

region; indeed the fragments

found were identical to today’s

domesticated pepo squash. Since

then, earlier dates have steadily

accumulated for the domestica-

tion of nearly every New World

crop. Piperno’s team has dated

starch grains from domesticated

manioc, arrowroot, and maize on

milling stones in Panama to up to 7800 years

old, and other Panamanian sites have yielded

dates for these crops that are nearly as early.

This week, on page 1890 of this issue of

Science, a team led by Dillehay reports

10,000-year-old squash and 8500-year-old

peanuts on the floors and hearths of houses

made of stone and reeds in the Andes

Mountains of Peru. Genetic studies and the

distribution of possible wild ancestors sug-

gest that these crops were probably domes-

ticated elsewhere, in South America’s low-

land tropical forests. So these very ancient

dates show how quickly domesticated crops

spread from their original centers of origin,

the team concludes. But identifying domes-

tication is not always easy: Smith questions

whether Dillehay’s evidence proves that

squash, peanuts, and other plants had actu-

ally undergone “any of the genetic or mor-

phological markers of domestication.”

All the same, the flurry of early dates in

the New World is “remarkable,” says ethno-

botanist Eve Emshwiller of the University of

Wisconsin, Madison, because the f irst

domesticates appear not too long after

humans colonized the Americas, at least

13,000 years ago. That’s a contrast to the

Old World, where people lived for tens of

thousands of years before domesticating

plants. Dillehay agrees: “People between

13,000 and 10,000 years ago were adapting

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 316 29 JUNE 2007 1833

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pepo squash 5000 B.P.

Sunflower 5000 B.P.

Chenopod 4000 B.P.

Marshelder 4000 B.P

pepo squash 10,000 B.P.

Maize 9000–8000 B.P.

Common bean 4000 B.P.

Moschata squash 10,000 B.P.

Arrowroot 9000 B.P.

Yam (D. trifida) 6000 B.P.Cotton 6000 B.P.Sweet potato 4500 B.P.Lima bean 6500 B.P.

Leren 10,000 B.P.

Potato 7000 B.P.?

Quinoa 5000 B.P. Peanut 8500 B.P.

Manioc 8000 B.P.

Chili pepper 6000 B.P.

African rice 2000 B.P.

Pearl millet 3000 B.P.

Sorghum 4000 B.P.

Rye 13,000 B.P.?

Emmer wheat 10,000 B.P.

Einkorn wheat 10,500 B.P.

Barley 10,000 B.P.

Fig 11,400 B.P.?

Mung bean 4500 B.P.

Horse gram 4500 B.P.

Millets 4500 B.P.

Broomcorn millet 8000 B.P.

Foxtail millet 8000 B.P.

Rice 8000 B.P.

Foxnut 8000 B.P.

Yam (D. alata) 7000 B.P.?

Banana 7000 B.P.

Taro 7000 B.P.?

Wild. A 23,000-year-

old wheat fragment

from Ohalo II.

Multiple birth. People in many different parts of the world independently began to cultivate and eventually domesticate plants.

INDEPENDENT CENTERS OFDOMESTICATIONINDEPENDENT CENTERS OFDOMESTICATION

Published by AAAS

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to [changing climatic conditions] more favor-

ably than we had thought before.”

Genetic data support the early dates, too.

For example, John Doebley of the Univer-

sity of Wisconsin, Madison, genotyped

numerous specimens of that New World sta-

ple, maize, and its wild ancestor, teosinte.

From the number of genetic changes

between teosinte and maize, and the likely

speed of the “molecular clock,” Doebley’s

team concluded in a paper published in the

Proceedings of the National Academy of

Sciences (PNAS) in 2002 that maize was

domesticated about 9000 years ago. And

they found that maize was probably domes-

ticated only once, in the Balsas River Valley

of southern Mexico.

In an astonishing stream of studies,

Doebley and other researchers have also

taken a detailed look at the genetic changes

underpinning maize domestication. The

transformation of teosinte to maize was

dramatic, as these plants look so different

that researchers once doubted their rela-

tionship. Ears of teosinte are multistalked

and have only five to 12 kernels, whereas

single-stalk maize ears have 500 or more. A

tough casing also protects teosinte kernels,

whereas maize kernels are “naked” and

accessible to humans. Indeed, some archae-

ologists have suggested that the unappetiz-

ing teosinte was first domesticated to make

alcoholic drinks from its sugary stalks

rather than for the dinner table.

Maize domestication genes include tb1,

which controls the number of stalks, pbf,

which controls protein storage in the kernel,

and su1, which affects starch storage.

Recently, Doebley teamed up with ancient

DNA specialists to track changes in these

genes in ancient maize, using 11 maize cobs

from Mexico and New Mexico dated from

5000 to about 600 years ago. The domesti-

cated variants of tb1 and pbf were present in

all the ancient DNA samples, and all the

Mexican cobs had the domesticated variant

of the su1 gene. But 1900-year-old cobs

from New Mexico showed a mix of wild and

domesticated variants, the team reported in

Science (14 November 2003, p. 1158).

If the domesticated variant of su1—

which may give corn the properties neces-

sary for making good tortillas—was not

widespread in maize populations until

much later, then domestication might have

taken place over an extended period, the

team concluded. “There must be several

stages to genetic domestication of plants,”

says Manchester’s Brown.

Doebley’s work has spurred the archaeol-

ogists to try to keep up. His

f inding that maize was

domesticated 9000 years ago in Mexico’s

Balsa River region inspired Piperno’s inter-

national team to comb the valleys in search

of confirmation, for example. In the 30 May

online edition of PNAS, they reported pre-

liminary evidence that domesticated squash

and maize were grown on ancient lakesides

probably by 8500 years ago, although the

dates are not yet confirmed. “We think that

before long we will be able to push the

archaeological dates back to match the

genetic data,” says Piperno.

Yet even if people in the New World were

domesticating plants early, they did not nec-

essarily become full-fledged farmers right

away, some archaeologists argue. “The first

plant domestication was 10,000 years ago,

but the development of village-based agri-

cultural economies did not happen until

more than 5000 years later,” says Smith. In a

2001 paper in the Journal of Archaeological

Research, Smith argued that in many parts

of the world initial plant domestication was

followed by a long period of “low-level

food production,” during which prehistoric

peoples continued to hunt and gather while

slowly adding already domesticated crops

to their diet.

“Domestication of a plant is one thing,

and fully adopting it is another,” agrees

Dillehay. But he argues that his new evi-

dence from the Peruvian Andes, which

includes houses, may indicate that both set-

tled village life and farming economies

arose earlier than researchers thought, at

least in some parts of the Americas.

Piperno agrees that the work of Dillehay

and others may now be providing the “miss-

ing evidence” to fill at least some of that

5000-year gap.

Tell me why

Back in the 1950s, many archaeologists

thought agriculture was born in only two

places: the Near East and the Americas.

From these two fountainheads of farming,

the story went, agriculture spread through-

out the world. Yet archaeologists now recog-

nize at least 10 independent centers, and

even regions once thought to be agricultural

backwaters have taken on a new importance.

In 2003, a team led by Monash’s Denham

clinched the case that bananas, taro, and

yams were independently domesticated in

New Guinea nearly 7000 years ago (Science,

11 July 2003, p. 180).

So if domestication happened repeatedly,

what sparked this new relationship between

people and plants? Researchers have pon-

dered the question since the 1920s, when

Australian prehistorian V. Gordon Childe

STARCH REVEALS CROP IDENTITIESUntil very recently, archaeologists searching for the first domesticatedforms of tropical plants such as yams, manioc, and bananas just kept onlooking. The humid tropical environments in which these plants growdestroyed evidence of their existence, leaving archaeologists with “patchyand speculative” accounts of their domestication, says archaeobotanistAndrew Fairbairn of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Then in the mid-1990s, archaeologists realized the potential of starchgrain analysis, a technique used for more than a century by botanists toidentify modern plants. Plants manufacture and store starches in micro-scopic organelles called amyloplasts. Both the size of the amyloplastsand the pattern of starch deposition vary from plant to plant, often mak-ing it possible to distinguish species. “This methodology makes thingsvisible that were previously invisible,” says archaeobotanist Linda Perryof the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. That new visibility haspushed back the dates of domestication for a number of tropical crops,including squash, manioc, and chili peppers (see main text). When Perryand her colleagues went looking for chili pepper starch grains in Centraland South America, for example, they found them seemingly every-where: in sediments, on milling stones and stone tools, and on potteryshards. The oldest date back to 6100 years ago.

What’s more, in some plants—although not all—starch grains of wild and domesticatedstrains are distinct. For example, starch grains of wild chili peppers are 5 to 6 micrometers long,whereas the domesticated versions are a whopping 20 micrometers. The method is now used to identify everything from bananas to maize to wild barley and has “breathed new life into the investigation of early agriculture,” says Timothy Denham of Monash University in Clayton, Australia. –M.B.

D i s t i n g u i s h e d .

Starch grains identifymanioc (top) andmaize (bottom).

Published by AAAS

pegged the rise of farming to dramatic cli-

matic changes now known to have taken

place around 11,500 years ago. That’s when

the last Ice Age ended and the Pleistocene

period gave way to the much milder

Holocene—the geological epoch in which

we live today, with a warmer, wetter, and

more stable climate.

Childe’s hypothesis sparked a lot of

research. But since his day researchers have

swung back and forth between environmen-

tal explanations and those that focus more on

social changes within increasingly sedentary

communities of hunters and gatherers.

All the same, most archaeologists agree that

the origins of agriculture have something

to do with the broader transition from the

Pleistocene to the Holocene. “I am comfortable

seeing this climate change as a precondition for

agriculture,” says the Smithsonian’s Smith.

But he points out that it can’t be the sole

explanation for the rise of farming in regions

such as eastern North America, where

squash and several other crops were domes-

ticated only about 5000 years ago.

Some researchers correlate the origins of

farming not with the early Holocene but with

a late Pleistocene global cold snap called the

Younger Dryas, which hit about 13,000 years

ago and sharply reversed warming trends for

more than a millennium. This hypothesis

was prompted by excavations at Abu

Hureyra in Syria’s Euphrates Valley, led by

British archaeologist Andrew Moore, now at

the Rochester Institute of Technology in

New York. Abu Hureyra was first occupied

by hunter-gatherers about 13,500 years ago

and later by early farmers, providing a rare

window on the transition to agriculture.

UCL’s Hillman, who analyzed the plant

remains, suggested that the Younger Dryas

had a devastating effect on the availability of

the wild cereals and other plants at the site.

Hunter-gatherers eventually disappeared,

and a short time later possible first evidence

of farming—larger grains of rye—show up.

Hillman and Moore proposed that the

region’s hunter-gatherers invented agricul-

ture to solve food shortages brought on by

the cold climate.

“Hillman’s evidence is convincing,” at

least for the Near East, says Piperno. “The

Younger Dryas may have been some kind

of trigger.” The worldwide invention of

agriculture, Piperno adds, suggests “that

there must have been a common set of

underlying factors.”

But not everyone is persuaded by Hillman’s

case for rye domestication. And after its

possible appearance at Abu Hureyra,

domesticated rye doesn’t show up for thou-

sands of years anywhere in the Near East.

Even if the Younger Dryas can explain the

sequence of events at Abu Hureyra, it hasn’t

been shown to spur farming in other

regions, says David Harris of the Institute of

Archaeology in London. Willcox, in a 2005

review of Near East farming in the journal

Vegetation History and Archaeobotany,

argued that agriculture did not really catch

on until after the Younger Dryas was over

and the Holocene, with its more stable cli-

matic conditions, had begun.

Indeed, the agricultural lifestyle might

have been “impossible” during the glacial

conditions of the Pleistocene but “manda-

tory” during the Holocene, argued ecolo-

gist Peter Richerson of the University of

California, Davis, and his colleagues in a

2001 paper in American Antiquity. One

explanation: Dramatically lower carbon

dioxide levels during the Pleistocene

might have made farming untenable, a

hypothesis first proposed back in 1995 by

botanist Rowan Sage of the University of

Toronto. Crops grow more in higher ambi-

ent CO2

levels. As the Holocene began, CO2

levels rose by roughly 50%, from 180 parts

per million to 280 ppm in just a few thou-

sand years, according to polar ice-core

records. “This would have had a big effect

on photosynthesis and plant productivity,”

Richerson says.

The Pleistocene-Holocene transition

might also have affected decisions about

what to eat. Recently, Piperno, Denham,

Kennett, and others have been studying

the choices humans make, bor rowing

methods from optimal foraging theory, a

Darwinian approach that assumes humans

and other animals pursue the most advan-

tageous strategy for getting food. In a

recent study, Piperno looked at the low-

land tropics of the New World, as forests

expanded into once-open areas. Based on

the changing availability of both plants

and animals, she calculated that farming

would have been more advantageous than

foraging right around the time that the

f irst domesticated crops appear, about

10,000 years ago.

But some archaeologists think that too

much emphasis on environmental expla-

nations gives short shrift to the less easily

testable social and symbolic aspects of

human behavior. “We have tended to

leave these aspects out and focused on an

economic paradigm,” says archaeologist

Joy McCorriston of Ohio State University

in Columbus.

In the 1980s, for example, the late

French prehistorian Jacques Cauvin, who

founded the Jalès center, proposed that in

the Near East a rise of religious symbolism

changed the relationship between people

and nature and made farming possible.

More recently, archaeologist Brian Hayden

of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby,

Canada, argued that farming had been

invented by ambitious hunter-gatherers

seeking greater prestige and wealth within

their communities.

As ideas are batted back and forth,

some doubt that a global explanation for

agriculture will be found. “We are all

thrashing around, trying to find an expla-

nation for something that is worldwide,”

says archaeologist Graeme Barker of the

University of Cambridge in the U.K. “It is

far too simplistic.” But that won’t stop

researchers from trying. Says Kennett:

“The transition to agriculture is one of the

central questions in archaeology. We need

to understand it.”–MICHAEL BALTER

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 316 29 JUNE 2007 1835

CR

ED

IT: A

FT

ER

DA

VID

HA

RR

IS (1

99

6)

NEWSFOCUS

Gathering/collecting

including use of fire.

FOOD PROCUREMENT

FROM WILD PLANTS

Cultivation with

small-scale clearance

of vegetation and

minimal tillage.

Cultivation with

larger-scale land

clearance and

systematic tillage.

Agriculture based

largely or exclusively

on cultivars with

greater labor input

into cultivation and

maintenance of

facilities.

FOOD PRODUCTION FROM

WILD PLANTS DOMINANT

CROP PRODUCTIONDOMINANT

Plant domestication: increasing

dependence on cultivars for food.

Decreasing dependence on wild plants for food.

TIME

Evolution of Food Production From Plants

Published by AAAS

Leading Edge

Review

Cell 127, December 29, 2006 ©2006 Elsevier Inc. 1309

Most members of our modern industrial societies have never seen and would not recognize the unpromising wild plants that are the progenitors of our remarkably produc-tive crops. Very few members of these societies would survive if all they had were a field of wild grain and herbs and their own wits to sustain them. Yet, 10,000 years ago, people who could not read, write, or do calculus pros-pered on diets composed of wild plants and animals. Even more remarkably, these ancient peoples began a plant-breeding program that transformed hundreds of wild plant species into domesticated crops, including all of the most highly productive crops—rice, wheat, maize—on which human survival is dependent today.

In this review, we first summarize some basic observa-tions about domestication and the origin of agriculture. How were crops modified during domestication? What was the breeding process by which wild species were converted to crops? And when and where did domesti-cation take place? Next, we discuss the genes that have been identified to date as controlling key differences in plant structures and physiology that distinguish crops and their progenitors or different crop varieties from one another. We then discuss how population genetic analy-ses can be used to discover genes that were the targets of selection during plant domestication by humans. We end by summarizing what has been learned about how domestication modified plant development to produce today’s crops and by giving some examples of how this knowledge is being exploited to drive crop improve-ments in ways not possible using traditional plant breed-ing methods.

The Domestication SyndromePlant domestication is the genetic modification of a wild species to create a new form of a plant altered to meet

human needs. For many crops, domestication has ren-dered the plant completely dependent on humans such that it is no longer capable of propagating itself in nature. Maize and cauliflower are good examples of such highly modified forms. However, other crops, such as hemp, carrot, and lettuce, have been more modestly modified compared to their progenitors, and they can either revert to the wild or become self-propagating weeds.

There is a common suite of traits—known as the “domestication syndrome”—that distinguishes most seed and fruit crops from their progenitors (Hammer, 1984). Compared to their progenitors, food crops typi-cally have larger fruits or grains, more robust plants overall, more determinate growth or increased api-cal dominance (the robust growth of the central stem in comparison to the side stems), and a loss of natu-ral seed dispersal so that seeds remain attached to the plant for easy harvest by humans (Figure 1). Remarkably, crops often have fewer (although larger) fruits or grains per plant than their progenitors. A variety of physiologi-cal changes are also involved. These include a loss of seed dormancy, a decrease in bitter substances in edi-ble structures, changes in photoperiod sensitivity, and synchronized flowering.

The Domestication ProcessMost researchers believe that agriculture began as an attempt to modify the landscape and thereby encour-age the growth of edible wild plants at the expense of less useful ones (Smith, 1998). Among hunter-gather-ers such as the Australian Aborigines, burning of native vegetation was practiced because species of grasses favored as food thrived after the burning. From such a practice, it is a small step to burning an area devoid of useful plants and then sowing seed of favored species

The Molecular Genetics of Crop DomesticationJohn F. Doebley,1,* Brandon S. Gaut,2 and Bruce D. Smith3

1Department of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA2Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA3Archaeobiology Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, NHB MRC 112, Washington, DC 20013, USA*Contact: jdoebley@wisc.eduDOI 10.1016.j.cell.2006.12.006

Ten thousand years ago human societies around the globe began to transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. By 4000 years ago, ancient peoples had completed the domestication of all major crop species upon which human survival is dependent, including rice, wheat, and maize. Recent research has begun to reveal the genes respon-sible for this agricultural revolution. The list of genes to date tentatively suggests that diverse plant developmental pathways were the targets of Neolithic “genetic tinkering,” and we are now closer to understanding how plant development was redirected to meet the needs of a hungry world.

1310 Cell 127, December 29, 2006 ©2006 Elsevier Inc.

gathered from another location. Key to the domestica-tion process would be a subsequent switch from allow-ing edible wild species to naturally resow themselves in burned fields, to sowing seed gathered the previous season. Once this practice was established, selection and crop improvement could begin.

Although cereals and other field crops were likely to have been domesticated in the context of large fields cleared by burning or by spring floods along rivers, other domesticates may have had their beginnings as weeds near seasonal campgrounds (Anderson, 1969). Hunter-gatherers often follow seasonal migra-tory schedules, visiting the same specific sites at given times every year. The disturbance of the natural vegetation and middens at these sites provided fertile ground for the types of colonizing species that were the progenitors of our crops. Seeds discarded with the “kitchen” trash one year would sprout into a new crop by the time the group returned the following year. If they preferentially collected seeds and fruit from plants with the most desirable traits, then over time the frequency of plants with these favored phenotypes would increase in their garden crop. Eventually, no new wild seeds and fruits would be collected and a switch to deliberate sowing of seeds would occur.

The early agricultural practices just described have left their signatures on the patterns of genetic diversity in the genomes of crop plants. Because early farmers used only a limited number of individuals of the progeni-tor species, much of the genetic diversity in the pro-genitor was left behind. Moreover, with each generation during the domestication process, only seed from the best plants formed the next generation. This winnow-ing caused a genetic bottleneck, which reduced genetic diversity throughout the genome (Doebley, 1989). The extent of this loss of diversity depends on the population size during the domestication period and the duration of that period (Eyre-Walker et al., 1998). Notably, the loss in diversity was not experienced equally by all genes in the genome. For genes that do not influence favored pheno-types (which are called neutral genes), the loss in diver-sity is simply a function of the strength of the bottleneck

Figure 1. Phenotypes of Some Crops and Their Progenitors(Top row) A plant of the maize progenitor, teosinte (left), with multiple stalks and long branches, is shown next to a plant of cultivated maize (right) with its single stalk. A maize ear (inset) bears its grain naked on the surface of the ear, whereas a teosinte ear (inset) has its grain (not visible) enclosed in the triangular casing that comprises the ear. (Second row) Wild rice (left) has a panicle that shatters, whereas culti-vated rice (rice) has a solid panicle of grain.(Third row) Cultivated wheat with the dominate allele of the Q gene (right) has a condensed and tough spike. Cultivated wheat with the recessive allele q (center) and wild wheat (left) with the recessive allele have slender, fragile spikes. (Fourth row) The massive fruit of cultivated tomato (right) next to the miniscule fruit of its progenitor (left). (Fifth row) A wild sunflower plant (left) has many small heads borne on multiple slender stalks, whereas a cultivated sunflower plant (right) has a single large head borne on a thick stalk.

Cell 127, December 29, 2006 ©2006 Elsevier Inc. 1311

in terms of the population size and duration (Figure 2). How-ever, genes that influence desirable phenotypes expe-rienced a more drastic loss of diversity because plants carrying favored alleles con-tributed the most progeny to each subsequent generation and other alleles were elimi-nated from the population (Wright et al., 2005).

One unknown in the domes-tication process is the extent to which new mutations versus preexisting genetic variation in the wild species contributed to the evolution of crop phenotypes. In a few cases, crops possess alleles of major genes that disrupt seed shattering (Li et al., 2006) or the protective casing surrounding the seed (Wang et al., 2005) that are not found in the progeni-tor species. However, alleles of genes that contribute to increased fruit size in tomato (Nesbitt and Tanksley, 2002) or increased apical dominance in maize (Clark et al., 2004) are also found in their wild or feral relatives, although at lower frequencies. Given the large store of genetic variation in the progenitor species, it seems most reasonable that domestication largely involved filtering out the best alleles from standing allelic varia-tion in crop ancestors, although new mutations in key developmental pathways may have been instrumental for some traits.

Crop Origins and DiversificationMore than a half dozen different independent centers of domestication have been identified to date (Figure 3). These centers comprise a promising comparative set of developmental trajectories in that they differ markedly in a number of important respects: their geographical size, the number and diversity of each region’s locally domesticated species and their relative potential as food sources (both individually and as overall inte-grated food production systems), and how quickly each region’s emerging domesticate-based economies initially developed and subsequently expanded into adjacent regions (Smith, 1998; Piperno and Pearsall, 1998). The Fertile Crescent region of the Near East, for example, witnessed the domestication of a remarkable set of plant and animal species that were formed rela-tively quickly into a powerful and expansive agricultural economy (e.g., goat, sheep, pig, cattle, einkorn and emmer wheat, barley, and lentils). In comparison, no animals were brought under domestication in eastern North America, and of the four plants that were domes-ticated, only summer squash and sunflower survived as domesticates into the 1800s.

Regional scale comparative analysis of agricultural origins is of course not restricted to the identified independent centers of domestication. Over the past 10,000 years most other areas of the world have also witnessed the transition to food production economies, as introduced domesticates were selectively recombined and integrated with local plants, resulting in a rich worldwide mosaic of agricultural sys-tems. Aided by a range of new techniques and approaches, archaeologists and geneticists are documenting this long and complex process of agricultural expansion and the associated

temporal and geographical patterns of crop diffusion in an increasing number of world regions (Harris, 1996).

Tracing the Origins of CropsOver the past 20 years, there has been a concerted effort on the part of archaeologists and geneticists to answer a variety of questions regarding the histories of indi-vidual domesticated species, the basic building blocks of the agricultural transition (Smith, 2001; Zeder et al., 2006). What wild species and populations were ances-tral to specific crops? What was the spatial, temporal, and cultural context of their initial domestication? What phenotypic changes occurred during domestication in the archaeological record and at what rate? The multi-disciplinary, archaeological-genetic approach to these questions has proven remarkably informative, especially for crops like maize and wheat.

Maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) provides perhaps the best example of how parallel genetic and archaeologi-cal research can be combined to provide a reasonably detailed and comprehensive account of a species’ initial domestication and subsequent dispersal. Genetic anal-ysis has identified populations of the wild grass teos-inte growing in the central Balsas river valley of southern Mexico as the closest modern relative of maize, indicat-ing that this general region is a candidate for the loca-tion of the initial domestication of maize (Matsuoka et al., 2002). The oldest archaeological maize ears come from Guilá Naquitz Cave in the valley of Oaxaca, located only about 400 km northeast of the Balsas River, where two small cobs have been found dating to about 6300 BP (before present) (Piperno and Flannery, 2001).

Ongoing analyses continue to document changes in the morphology of maize and the development of region-ally distinct land races. This work has shown that the full suite of morphological traits defining domesticated maize were already present in the 6300 year-old maize of Guilá Naquitz (Benz, 2001). At the same time, ancient

Figure 2. The Effects of the Domestication Bottleneck on Genetic Diversity(Left) Population bottlenecks are a common important demo-graphic event during domestication. Genetic diversity is rep-resented by shaded balls; the bottleneck reduces diversity in neutral genes, as shown by the loss of the orange and blue variants. (Right) Selection decreases diversity beyond that caused by the bottleneck, as shown by the loss of all but one genetic variant in the domesticated species. Note, however, that an exceptionally strong domestication bottleneck could leave lit-tle variation in neutral genes. In that case, it may be very dif-ficult to distinguish selected from neutral loci.

1312 Cell 127, December 29, 2006 ©2006 Elsevier Inc.

DNA studies of archaeological maize from northeast Mexico and the southwest United States have shown that it is possible to track human selection for specific attributes that are not observable in the archaeological record (Jaenicke-Despres et al., 2003). This highlights the potential for combining genetic and archaeological research in order to reconstruct the evolution of crop plants spanning thousands of years. In similar fashion, the recent genetic data tracing the temporal and geo-graphical radiation of maize from southern Mexico to the limits of cultivation in the Americas compare very closely to large scale efforts by archaeologists to track the gradual expansion of maize cultivation throughout the Americas (Matsuoka et al., 2002; Blake, 2006).

Einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum) provides a similar, if less robust, example of cross illumination from genetic and archaeological research on the initial domestication of major crop plants. A genetic com-parison of modern domesticated and wild einkorn populations across the Fertile Crescent identified the Karacadağ mountain region of southeastern Turkey as its likely heartland of domestication (Heun et al., 1997). Situated only about 200 km to the south, along the Euphrates River, the archaeological site of Abu Hureyra has yielded the earliest evidence (9600 BP) not only for domesticated einkorn wheat but also for emmer wheat (Triticum araraticum) and barley (Hor-deum vulgare) (Smith, 1998). The subsequent radia-tion of these crop plants across the Fertile Crescent and then north and west throughout Europe has been documented in some detail in the archaeological record of the two regions (Harris, 1996).

The archaeological record of the domestication and early history of other major crop plants, such as rice (Oryza sativa), remains incomplete. The earliest evidence for domesticated rice has been recovered from the set-tlements of already sophisticated rice-farming societies along the middle and lower Yangtze River corridor in southern China. At the village settlement of Ho-mu-tu along the lower Yangtze River, for example, 1 m thick deposits of domesticated rice husks dating to about 7000 BP were recovered (Smith, 1998). These settle-ments predate any sign of rice cultivation elsewhere in East Asia by several thousand years. As recently devel-oped methods of plant recovery and analysis are more widely applied to earlier sites along the Yangtze and throughout East Asia, the initial domestication of rice will quite likely be pushed back in time another 1000–2000 years or more. Unfortunately, archaeological rice grains cannot yet be assigned with any degree of confidence to particular varieties (e.g., indica and japonica) on the basis of morphology. As a result, any better understanding of the initial domestication and early history of indica ver-sus japonica will probably be based on genetic analysis of ancient and present-day populations of domesticated and wild rice. For example, a recent analysis of DNA-sequence data has confirmed that indica and japonica are the products of separate domestication events, the former south of the Himalaya and the latter in southern China (Londo et al., 2006).

Another crop that has been the recent subject of landmark genetic research is the tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum). Unfortunately, this crop is much less well documented in the archaeological record. Given the

Figure 3. The Independent Centers of DomesticationFor each region, principal crop plants and estimates of when they were brought under domestication based on currently available archaeological evidence are shown.

Cell 127, December 29, 2006 ©2006 Elsevier Inc. 1313

midelevation lomas zone habitat of the likely wild ances-tor of tomato along the west coast of South America, it is surprising that evidence for domesticated tomato first appears far to the north, in Mexico, in contexts that are less than 1000 years old. However, genetic data suggest that the ancestor of tomato may have spread from South America to Mexico as a weed and then been domesti-cated in Mexico (Rick and Fobes 1975).

Genes Controlling Domestication TraitsOver the past decade, researchers have begun to identify the specific genes that control some of the most impor-tant morphological changes associated with domestica-tion. Because the traits involved are mostly quantitative in nature, the path to identifying these genes started with the mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTL) in progenitor-crop hybrid populations, followed either by positional cloning or cloning using a combination of positional information and candidate gene analysis. Although the list of well-documented domestication genes is short, some generalities are beginning to appear. Below, we summarize what has been learned to date about genes that are known to have contributed to phenotypic differ-ences in traits under selection during domestication.

Teosinte branched1 (tb1) of maize was identified as a major QTL controlling the difference in apical dominance between maize and its progenitor, teosinte (Doebley et al., 1997; Doebley, 2004). Maize plants typically have a single stalk with short branches tipped by ears, whereas teosinte plants are more highly branched (Figure 1). tb1, which controls these differences, is a founding member of the TCP family of transcriptional regulators, a class of genes involved in the transcriptional regulation of cell-cycle genes including PCNA and cyclins (Cubas et al., 1999; Kosugi and Ohashi, 2002). The current model is that tb1 represses the outgrowth of the axillary meris-tems and branch elongation via its repressive effect on the cell cycle. This repression may result from competi-tive binding of TB1 (a repressor) to TCP-specific bind-ing sites in the promoters of the cell-cycle genes, thus blocking other TCP genes from activating these cell-cycle genes (Li et al., 2005). Differences in tb1 expres-sion patterns between maize and teosinte indicate that human selection was targeted at regulatory differences that produced a higher level of tb1 message in maize (Doebley et al., 1997; Wang et al., 1999). The lack of any fixed amino acid differences between maize and teos-inte in the TB1 protein supports this hypothesis.

Fruitweight2.2 (fw2.2) was identified as a large effect QTL controlling 30% of the difference in fruit mass between wild and cultivated tomato (Figure 1) (Frary et al., 2000). The exact molecular function of fw2.2 is not known, although it shares homology with the human RAS oncogenes in protein structure and contains two pre-dicted transmembrane-spanning domains. fw2.2 acts as a negative regulator of cell division in the fruit, per-haps via some role in cell-to-cell communication. Human selection appears to have favored a heterochronic shift

in fw2.2 expression such that the large-fruited allele is expressed at lower levels later in fruit development, thus allowing continued fruit growth through proliferative cell division (Cong et al., 2002). The large- and small-fruited alleles have no differences in protein sequence, support-ing the model that changes in gene regulation underlie the evolution of tomato fruit size as controlled by fw2.2 (Nesbitt and Tanksley, 2002).

Teosinte glume architecture1 (tga1) was identified as a QTL controlling the formation of the casing that sur-rounds the kernels of the maize ancestor, teosinte (Wang et al., 2005). tga1 is a member of the squamosa-pro-moter binding protein (SBP) family of transcriptional regulators. Some members of this family directly regu-late MADS-box transcriptional regulators (Cardon et al., 1999), suggesting that tga1 may sit at the top of a cascade of transcriptional regulators. Consistent with this hypothesis, tga1 has phenotypic effects on diverse traits including cell lignification, silica deposition in cells, three-dimensional organ growth, and organ size (Dor-weiler and Doebley, 1997). The difference in function between the maize and teosinte alleles of tga1 appears to be the result of a single amino acid change. The fact that there are no discernable differences in gene expres-sion supports this interpretation.

Q is a major gene involved in wheat domestication that affects a suite of traits, including the tendency of the spike (ear) to shatter, the tenacity of the chaff surround-ing the grain, and whether the spike is elongated as in wild wheat or compact like the cultivated forms (Figure 1) (Simons et al., 2006). Recently, Q has been identified as a member of the AP2 family of plant-specific transcrip-tional regulators. This gene family regulates a diverse set of developmental traits in plants, but especially traits related to inflorescence structure and flowering. The cul-tivated (Q) allele is expressed at a higher level than the wild (q) allele, and gene dosage analysis indicates that differences in expression could be sufficient to explain the difference in phenotype. However, these alleles also differ by a single amino acid change that affects pro-tein dimerization, suggesting both regulator and protein function changes could be involved.

shattering4 (sh4) is a major QTL controlling whether the seed fall off the plant (shatter) as in wild rice or adhere to the plant as in cultivated rice. Li et al. (2006) have shown that sh4 encodes a gene with homology to Myb3 transcription factors. Using transformation, Li et al. (2006) were able to confirm that a single amino change in the predicted DNA binding domain converts plants from shattering to nonshattering. A decrease in expression of the cultivated allele as compared to the wild allele may also be important. Notably, the cultivated sh4 allele weakens, but does not fully eliminate, the shat-tering phenotype, which might be critical, because farm-ers need seed that stays on the plant long enough to be harvested but which can subsequently be freed from the plant by threshing. Although the downstream targets of sh4 are unknown, they may be involved in programmed

1314 Cell 127, December 29, 2006 ©2006 Elsevier Inc.

Table 1. Genes of Interest in Crop Domestication and Improvement1

Gene(s) Crop Molecular and Phenotypic Function Controls Phenotype2

Selection Evidence3

Causative Change

Genes Identified as Controlling Domestication Traits

tb1 Maize Transcriptional regulator (TCP); plant and inflores-cence structure

Yes Yes regulatory change

tga1 Maize Transcriptional regulator (SBP); seed casing Yes Yes amino acid change

qSH1 Rice Transcriptional regulator (homeodomain); abscis-sion layer formation, shattering

Yes N.T. regulatory change

Rc Rice Transcriptional regulator (bHLH); seed color Yes N.T. disrupted coding sequence

sh4 Rice Transcriptional regulator (Myb3); abscission layer formation, shattering

Yes N.T. regulatory/amino acid change

fw2.2 Tomato Cell signaling; fruit weight Yes N.T. regulatory change

Q Wheat Transcriptional regulator (AP2); inflorescence structure

Yes N.T. regulatory/amino acid change

Genes Identified as Controlling Varietal Differences

c1 Maize Transcriptional regulator (MYB); kernel color Yes Yes regulatory change

r1 Maize Transcriptional regulator (bHLH); kernel color Yes N.T. regulatory change

sh2 Maize pyrophosphorylase; supersweet sweet corn Yes N.T. transposon insertion

su1 Maize isoamylase; sweet corn gene Yes Yes amino acid change

y1 Maize Phytoene synthase; carotenoid content Yes Yes regulatory change

brix9-2-5 Tomato Invertase; fruit soluble solid content Yes N.T. amino acid change

ovate Tomato Unknown; fruit shape Yes N.T. early stop codon

rin Tomato Transcriptional regulator (MADS); fruit ripening Yes N.T. regulatory change

sp Tomato Cell signaling; determinant plant growth Yes N.T. amino acid change

R Pea Starch branching enzyme; seed sugar content Yes N.T. transposon insertion

ehd1 Rice B-type response regulator; flowering time Yes N.T. amino acid change

gn1 Rice Cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenase; grain number Yes N.T. regulatory/early stop codon

hd1 Rice Transcriptional regulator (zinc finger); flowering time Yes N.T. disrupted coding sequence

hd6 Rice Protein kinase; flowering time Yes N.T. early stop codon

sd1 Rice GA20 oxidase; plant height Yes Yes disrupted coding sequence

waxy Rice Starch synthase; sticky grains Yes Yes intron splicing defect

rht Wheat Transcriptional regulator (SH2); plant height Yes N.T. early stop codon

vrn1 Wheat Transcriptional regulator (MADS); vernalization Yes N.T. regulatory change

vrn2 Wheat Transcriptional regulator (ZCCT); vernalization Yes N.T. amino acid change

Genes Identified by Selection Screens Targeted at Individual Candidate Genes

boCal Cauli-flower

Transcriptional regulator (MADS); inflorescence structure

Candidate Yes early stop codon?

ba1 Maize Transcriptional regulator (bHLH); plant and inflores-cence structure

Candidate Yes —

ra1 Maize Transcriptional regulator (MYB); inflorescence structure

Candidate Yes —

su1, bt2, ae1 Maize Starch biosynthetic enzymes Candidate Yes —

Cell 127, December 29, 2006 ©2006 Elsevier Inc. 1315

cell death or the release of hydrolytic enzymes that dis-solve the bonds between cells in the abscission layer that separates the grain from the plant.

qSH1 is another major QTL controlling shattering in rice that has recently been cloned and shown to encode a homeobox containing transcription factor (Konishi et al., 2006). By a combination of genetic approaches, Konishi and colleagues were able to demonstrate that a single nucleotide change in a cis-regulatory element of qSH1 obliterated expression of the cells that form the shattering zone, thus preventing shattering. qSH1 was first identified in a segregating population from japonica x indica cross, indicating that it differentiates these two subspecies and suggesting that the loss of shatter-ing involved independent genetic changes during their domestications.

Although we have only a small sample of domestica-tion genes for major domestication traits, it is notable that none of the six domestication genes discussed above resulted from a null or loss-of-function mutation. In three cases, regulatory changes are inferred, in one an amino acid substitution is found, and in two cases there are combined regulatory and protein changes. Also, it is notable that five of the six are transcription factors and the fifth a likely cellular signaling (regulatory) gene. A longer list is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn, though we expect transcriptional regulators will continue to be over-represented among the major genes controlling morphological differences between crops and their progenitors.

Genes Controlling Varietal DifferencesIn addition to genes controlling classic domestication traits, many genes controlling differences between vari-eties of a single crop or important agronomic traits have been clearly identified (Table 1). Some of these genes

have been discovered as QTL, whereas others segre-gate as Mendelian loci. For morphological and struc-tural traits, there are several excellent examples. Grain number differences between rice varieties are control-led by grain number1 (gn1), which encodes an oxidase/dehydrogenase that degrades the plant hormone cyto-kinin (Ashikari et al., 2005). Regulatory changes in some alleles and a premature stop codon in another allele both contribute to functional variation at gn1. In tomato, the difference between varieties with pear-shaped ver-sus round fruits is controlled by ovate, a novel regula-tory gene with a putative nuclear localization signal and homology to human Von Willebrand factor genes (Liu et al., 2002). The functional polymorphism appears to be an early stop codon that conditions the pear shape. In cole crops (Brassica oleracea), the BoCAL gene (a mem-ber of the MADS box family of transcriptional regulators) appears to be involved in the unusual inflorescence mor-phologies of broccoli and cauliflower, possibly due to an early stop codon (Smith and King, 2000; Purugganan et al., 2000).

The list of known genes contributing to physiologi-cal or biochemical differences between crop varieties is much longer (Table 1). Here are a few well-characterized examples. Mendel’s wrinkled seed gene (r), which con-verts the field pea into the garden pea, is the result of an Ac/Ds-like transposon insertion that disrupts the coding sequence of a starch-branching enzyme (Bhattacha-ryya et al., 1990). In maize, yellow1 (y1) encodes a kernel specific phytoene synthase that produces yellow kernels with high levels of carotenoids, a precursor for vitamin A synthesis (Palaisa et al., 2003). The functional difference appears to involve a change in promoter sequences such that y1, which is normally expressed in leaves, is expressed in developing kernels. When it was discov-ered that yellow corn provides improved nutrition for

Table 1. Genes of Interest in Crop Domestication and Improvement1 (continued)

Gene(s) Crop Molecular and Phenotypic Function Controls Phenotype2

Selection Evidence3

Causative Change

Genes Identified through Untargeted Selection Screens

zagl1 Maize Transcriptional regulator (MADS) Unknown Yes —

17 genes Maize Varied functions, including auxin response, growth factor, kinase, methyl binding protein, transcription factors, amino acid biosynthesis and a circadian gene

Unknown Yes —

?30 genes Maize Varied functions, including auxin response, cell elongation protein, F-box protein, growth factor, heat shock proteins, hexokinase, kinase, steroid biosynthesis, transcription factors, amino acid biosynthesis and a circadian rhythm gene

Unknown Yes —

1For a version of the table with references for each gene, see Supplemental Data.2For genes listed as “candidate,” it is known that major mutations at these genes affect phenotype, but it has not been shown that natural allelic variation controls agronomically important differences between crops and progenitors or between crop vari-eties. For genes listed as “unknown,” there is no experimental evidence demonstrating an effect of these genes on agronomic phenotypes in the crop listed.3N.T. signifies not tested.

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farm animals, virtually all US corn was rapidly converted from white to yellow. In rice, glutinous (“sticky”) varie-ties lack amylose as a consequence of an altered intron splice donor site in the amylose synthesis gene, waxy (Wang et al., 1995; Olsen et al., 2006). The soluble solids content of tomatoes, a key determinant for the quality of tomato paste, is influenced by a QTL named brix9-2-5, which encodes an invertase—an enzyme that cleaves sucrose into simple sugars (Fridman et al., 2004). The functional difference between the alleles with high and low activity is an amino acid change. Finally, the colorful red and blue hues of maize kernels, which were selected for aesthetic or cultural reasons by ancient peoples, are the result of variants in two transcriptional regulators (c1 and r1) (Hanson et al., 1996). For both genes, alterations in the 5′ regulatory sequences, probably mediated by transposable elements, are responsible for the activa-tion of these genes and the anthocyanin pathway that they control in maize kernels.

A notable feature of this partial list of genes controlling varietal differences is the high frequency of loss-of-func-tion alleles (Table 1). However, there are several exam-ples of regulatory change as well. An important caution concerning this list is that most of the genes character-ized to date represent the “low-hanging fruit” that were easily cloned and characterized because they are major mutants in intensively studied biochemical pathways. At this point, the list is too short to draw firm conclusions beyond the observation that a diversity of functional classes is represented and null alleles are common.

Tests for Selection on Domesticated SpeciesQTL cloning of domestication genes is slow and labor intensive, and as a consequence relatively few domes-tication genes have been discovered by these means. An alternative, less costly approach is to ask whether a gene has been the target of human selection during domestication using population genetic analyses. The logic of this approach is straightforward: if a gene was the target of selection because it favorably influences a domestication or crop improvement trait, then it may show a decrease in nucleotide diversity, increased link-age disequilibrium (LD), and/or altered population fre-quencies of polymorphic nucleotides in the gene and linked regions (Smith and Haigh, 1974). If nucleotide polymorphism reveals such evidence, one can infer that the gene in question, or a closely linked gene, has been the target of human selection.

Crops are good systems to detect selection for two reasons (Wright and Gaut, 2005). First, selection has been intense and recent, and thus the signature of selection should be strong. Second, diversity can also be measured in the crop’s extant wild relative. In many cases, the wild relative is a reasonable representative of the ancestral, predomestication population of the crop. By using extant wild populations as a proxy, genetic diversity can be contrasted before and after the domes-tication bottleneck. Recent studies have constructed

statistical tests for selection that either take advantage of this contrast (Vigouroux et al., 2002; Tenaillon et al., 2004; Wright et al., 2005) or that control for demographic history (Nielsen et al., 2005). These approaches are rela-tively new, and several challenges remain (Hamblin et al., 2006). Nonetheless, they permit improved identifica-tion of genes with historical importance (Nielsen, 2005) and can be applied to any organism that experienced a recent bottleneck, including domesticated crops and animals (Pollinger et al., 2005) as well as species like humans (Akey et al., 2004) and Drosophila (Thornton and Andolfatto, 2006), both of which experienced a bot-tleneck during migration out of Africa.

Selection on Candidate Genes and Linked RegionsTests for selection have been applied most commonly to data from genes for which there has been a priori evi-dence of a role in domestication or crop improvement. One example is tb1 in maize, where the pattern of nucle-otide polymorphism was particularly striking (Wang et al., 1999). As expected after a domestication bottleneck, the coding region of tb1 contains less genetic diversity in maize than teosinte; the maize coding region retains ?40% of the genetic diversity in teosinte. The more sur-prising observation was that the reduction in diversity was far more severe in the 5′ untranslated region (UTR), where maize retains only 2% of teosinte diversity. Fur-ther, the pattern changed abruptly over a narrow ?100 base pair region. Based on these observations, Wang et al. (1999) made two conclusions. First, they concluded that selection targeted the tb1 5′ UTR during domesti-cation, consistent with previous observations that tb1 expression differs between maize and teosinte (Doebley et al., 1997). Second, based on the abrupt shift in the pattern of diversity, they concluded that recombination had been sufficient to uncouple the history of the 5′ UTR from the coding region.

Population genetic analyses have confirmed a history of selection in several more genes that were first identi-fied functionally (Table 1). The work thus far is heavily biased toward maize and represents genes that con-tribute to plant and inflorescence architecture (tb1, tga1, ba1, ra1), to plant and kernel color (c1, y1), and to kernel composition (bt2, ae1, su1). Fewer examples of selected loci exist in other domesticated plants, but important nonmaize examples include the waxy gene in rice and the BoCal gene in cauliflower (Table 1). It is worth not-ing that most of these analyses have relied on standard tests of selection, which do not correct for demographic history and therefore can be misleading. Nonetheless, for most of these genes, the combination of functional and evolutionary analysis makes a credible case for a role in domestication or crop improvement.

Thus far, it is not clear whether recombination typi-cally limits the effect of selection to a very small genomic region or whether large genomic regions are “dragged along” with selected genes via linkage (hitchhiking). To date, this question has only been addressed in two cases

Cell 127, December 29, 2006 ©2006 Elsevier Inc. 1317

in maize and one in rice. In one, Clark et al. (2004) meas-ured nucleotide polymorphism upstream of tb1 of maize. They found that the exceptionally low diversity typical of the 5′ UTR extended 60–90 kb upstream from tb1, and then diversity returned to normal levels. The hitch-hiked region consisted only of intergenic DNA, and thus apparently strong selection on tb1 did not affect the his-tory of other genes (Clark et al., 2004). Similarly, Palaisa et al. (2004) characterized selection around the maize y1 gene, which was a target of selection in the 1930s when the US farmers switched to yellow corn because of its nutritional value (Palaisa et al., 2003). Diversity levels suggest that hitchhiking has affected nucleotide poly-morphism ?600 kb downstream and ?200 kb upstream from y1 (Palaisa et al., 2004). This 800 kb region contains a handful of genes, demonstrating that selection on one gene (y1) can alter polymorphism at other genes in the case of extremely strong and rapid selection. Similarly, in rice, the waxy gene, which was the target of recent and strong selection, is flanked by a 250 kb region, including six other genes with reduced diversity as the result of hitchhiking (Olsen et al., 2006). Nonetheless, the gen-eral picture suggests that hitchhiking affects relatively few genes beyond those targeted by selection.

When Population Genetics FailsPopulation genetic analyses have failed to verify selection on several candidate domestication genes such as opaque2, which influences kernel lysine con-tent (Henry et al., 2005), and zfl2, which affects inflo-rescence structure (Bomblies and Doebley, 2005). For each of these genes, functional or QTL evidence suggests they contribute to agronomically important traits. Why do nucleotide polymorphism data fail to uncover a history of selection? There are at least four potential reasons. First, the gene may not have been a target of selection. The gene may contribute to a trait in a particular QTL study but may not have been prom-inent historically or in the genetic backgrounds availa-ble during domestication. Second, the study may have assayed polymorphism in the wrong genic region. For genes like tb1, a survey of polymorphism in the coding region would miss strong evidence for selection in the nearby promoter. Third, the statistical power to detect selection depends critically on sampling design and underlying levels of diversity. If diversity levels are low, it can be difficult to distinguish neutral from selected genes (Figure 2).

Finally, the ability to detect selection also depends on the history of the favored allele. Selection can be difficult to detect if the beneficial variant pre-existed as a com-mon neutral polymorphism prior to domestication (Innan and Kim, 2004; Przeworski et al., 2005). In this special case, the variant had the opportunity to recombine onto a number of haplotypes prior to the onset of selection. When selection commenced, it favored the variant and dragged along multiple linked haplotypes. These dif-ferent haplotypes may encompass substantial genetic

diversity. As a result, selection does not substantially reduce genetic diversity around the selected site, and nucleotide polymorphism data may not provide a clear signature of a selection event. However, it is not clear whether this model conforms to reality. Many mutations for domestication traits, such as shattering, would have been deleterious in the wild population; thus, it is unlikely that such variants pre-existed as common, neutral alle-les in wild populations.

Large-Scale Screens to Identify Selected GenesCandidate gene approaches have several shortcomings. For example, you need a candidate, there may be an unmanageably large number of candidates, and if you nominate the wrong candidates, you may be wasting your efforts while the true selected genes pass undetec-ted. Thus, an approach that ignores a priori information about gene function and instead assays large numbers of genes in a less biased manner can enable one to learn more than a candidate approach. This unbiased method, sometimes called a “selection screen,” is now practical, given technology that allows the collection of polymor-phism data on large numbers of genes and individuals. For some organisms, such as humans, whole genome selection screens are already possible.

To date, there have been few large-scale selection screens in crop plants. One study examined polymor-phism at microsatellites found within ESTs (expressed sequence tags) (Vigouroux et al., 2002). The study examined 501 microsatellites, which prior work indicated were invariant in US maize. The authors argued that this lack of diversity in maize suggested that these 501 ESTs may be enriched for selected genes. Microsatellite diversity was then examined in a larger and geographi-cally more diverse sample of maize and teosinte. The authors employed a battery of statistical tests, includ-ing standard neutrality tests and coalescent simulations that mimicked the domestication bottleneck, to detect selection from the polymorphism data. Microsatellites in 15 genes exhibited evidence of selection. Importantly, the authors verified the microsatellite-based inference by studying sequence polymorphism in one gene, a MADS-box transcription factor (Table 1). Similar screens of microsatellite diversity has been successfully used to identify genomic regions that show the signature of selection in both sorghum (Casa et al., 2005) and sun-flower (Burke et al., 2005). In both studies, there was ten-dency for “selected” microsatellite to lie near known QTL for domestication traits; however, because of extended LD in these crops, the identification of the candidate selected genes will require further work.

A selection screen has also been applied to maize using nucleotide polymorphism data. Wright et al. (2005) compared sequence diversity between maize inbreds and teosintes in 774 genes. By implementing a novel approach, these authors circumvented two statistical pitfalls: (1) the problem of circularity in using the same genes for demographic estimation and for selection

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tests and (2) the problem of maintaining statistical power when performing multiple tests. The approach also esti-mated the proportion of selected genes and ranked each gene by the posterior probability (PP) that it belonged in the selected group. Two to four percent of loci in the data set harbored the signature of selection. If this proportion is representative of the entire genome of ?59,000 genes (Messing et al., 2004), then ?1,200 maize genes bear a signature of selection, due either to domestication or recent crop improvement. The top 4% of candidate genes (about 30 genes) encompassed a range of pre-dicted functions but appeared to be enriched for func-tions related to transcriptional regulation, plant growth, and amino acid biosynthesis (Table 1). Notably, these selected genes clustered near known maize domestica-tion QTL in a statistically significant way.

In the third large-scale selection screen, Yamasaki et al. (2005) obtained nucleotide polymorphism data for 1200 maize genes. They focused on 35 genes with no nucleotide diversity in a set of 14 diverse maize inbreds, reasoning that this group with low diversity likely included selected genes. After assaying diversity in teosinte, 17 of 35 genes exhibited some evidence of selection, and eight of these showed selection under very stringent statisti-cal criteria. The eight genes included an auxin-response factor, a transcription factor, genes related to amino acid biosynthesis, and a circadian rhythm gene (Table 1). In addition to identifying these genes, the study used a new strategy to distinguish between types of selection. Spe-cifically, using a stratified sample of primitive and elite maize, this study was able to determine whether selec-tion occurred early in the domestication process or later as a consequence of crop improvement.

Sorghum provides the only nonmaize examples of large-scale selection screens for DNA sequence diver-sity (Hamblin et al., 2004, 2006). Among the 371 loci that have been examined, none show compelling evidence for positive selection, although these genes appear not to be evolving in a strictly neutral manner. Hamblin et al. suggest that the non-neutral pattern of diversity is the result of demographic factors, such as population struc-ture and migration, rather than selection during domes-tication. Thus, the success of selection screens in maize may not be realized in all other crops.

Altogether, selection screens in maize have identified >50 genes that have a history of selection consistent with contribution to agronomic traits. Their putative functions vary widely (Table 1), but some of the gene families and biological processes essential to maize domestication and improvement are becoming apparent. It is also sta-tistically unavoidable that some selection candidates will be false positives and other candidates may show evidence of selection solely because they are linked to another gene that was the actual gene under selection. For these reasons, functional characterization of candi-date genes is necessary, and additional characterization promises to yield important insights into the architecture of agronomic traits.

PerspectiveIn this article, we have reviewed two approaches to under-standing the genetic changes that underlie crop domesti-cation and improvement: (1) a classical genetic approach of starting with phenotype and working back to the gene and (2) a population genetic approach of starting with genes and asking whether these genes were targets of selection. From the list of genes identified using these approaches, we draw several conclusions.

First, the fact that five of the six major genes controlling morphological and structural changes during domesti-cation are transcriptional regulators suggests to us that this class of genes played a central role in domestication. Although based on limited evidence, this conclusion is not surprising in that transcriptional regulators are also the dominant class of genes that regulate morphologi-cal development in plants (Doebley and Lukens, 1998). Given that domestication typically involved increases in organ size (fruit, seed, etc.), it appears likely that genes controlling cell division should also be over-represented among major domestication genes. fw2.2 of tomato falls in this class. It has also been suggested that genes controlling meristem size and patterning, which are a function of cell division, will be important genes for domestication traits (Bomblies et al., 2003; Bommert et al., 2005), although, to date, there are no conclusive examples supporting this hypothesis.

Second, a diverse set of genes have contributed to varietal differences. For morphological traits and flower-ing time, transcriptional regulators are again over-rep-resented, although a kinase and a cytokinin oxidase/reductase have also been identified. For the nutrient composition of seeds and fruits, basic enzymatic genes in the biosynthetic pathways predominate. It is striking that many of the genes involved in varietal differences harbor early stop codons or other lesions that disrupt the coding sequence, suggesting that these are loss-of-function mutations. However, regulatory changes are also frequent, indicating that changes in the levels and pattern of gene expression have been important.

Third, there is also a clear difference in the control of complex phenotypes (morphology, flowering time) versus simple phenotypes (accumulation of a specific metabolite). For the former class, transcriptional regu-lators predominate—10 of 17 genes are transcriptional regulators, and the remaining seven are a mixed group of regulatory genes (kinase, response regulator, hor-mone biosynthetic enzymes). For simple phenotypes, biosynthetic enzymes predominate—six of nine are bio-synthetic enzymes, and three are transcriptional regula-tors of the pathway in question. This set of 26 genes is beginning to approach a large enough sample to expect that these proportions may remain roughly the same as the list of genes of large effect expands.

Fourth, selection screens appear to be revealing aspects of crop domestication and improvement that could have been missed by a classic phenotype-to-gene approach. We note that the range of molecular functions

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among the selected genes is quite broad (Table 1). It is likely in our view that some of these genes were under selection for aspects of morphology or physiology that have never been considered targets of selection during crop domestication and improvement. Some examples of exceptional selected genes include an F-Box protein involved in the ubiquitin pathway, a methyl binding pro-tein involved in epigenetic gene regulation, and heat-shock proteins. Clearly, much remains to be learned about how domestication sculpted crop genomes.

Can a knowledge of the genes contributing to past crop domestication and improvement guide future breeding efforts? We believe the answer is yes, and, in fact, plant breeding companies are already putting this knowledge into action. Some current efforts among lead-ing plant breeding companies include up- and downreg-ulating all the transcription factors in the genome, based on an understanding of the importance of this class of genes in regulating plant phenotypes. Other companies are applying selection screens to their own breeding lines to identify the genes that have contributed to the success of their best varieties. Similarly, QTL cloning for key agronomic genes is a focus. For known agro-nomic genes, companies are practicing “allele mining” or screening unimproved varieties and wild relatives to recover superior alleles that failed to pass through the domestication and improvement bottlenecks (Tanksley and McCouch 1997).

Can an understanding of the genetics of domesti-cation and plant development in general catalyze the development of new crops or novel varieties of existing crops? Yes is the clear answer. Knowing that a naturally occurring allele of a phytoene synthase gene in maize produces high levels of provitamin A in kernels encour-aged the development of crops like “golden rice” to help fight vitamin A deficiency in developing countries (Al-Babili and Beyer, 2005). The discovery that a MADS-box transcription factor (FRUITFALL) controls pod shattering in Arabidopsis allowed the development of canola with reduced pod-shattering via overexpression of FRUIT-FALL (Østergaard et al., 2006). Some authors have gone so far as to propose that the maize gene tga1, which regulates cob development, could be used to produce wheat, rye, and barley “on the cob” (Lev-Yadun et al., 2002). Although perhaps a fanciful idea, the extent to which plant development can be modified to meet human needs has certainly not yet reached it limits.

Over 10,000 years ago, human societies worldwide began to switch from economies based on gathering to ones based on agriculture. In doing so, they began a tradition of crop improvement that continues today. Ancient breeders accepted some trade-offs in this proc-ess, such as the 50% reduction in the protein content of domesticated cereal grains as compared to wild cereals in exchange for an increase in yield. However, it is they who built the foundation for the remarkably stable and plentiful food supply that we have today. There is every reason to expect that by using the full range of avail-

able tools modern breeders can further modify crops to improve their productivity and nutrition and to reduce the impact of humans on our environment.

Supplemental DataSupplemental Data include one table and Supplemental References and can be found with this article online at http://www.cell.com/cgi/content/full/127/7/1309/DC1/.

ACknowlEDGMEnTS

We thank E. Buckler, J. Faris, S. McCouch, D. Piperno, M. Purug-ganan, L. Rieseberg, T. Sang, and M. Zeder for helpful comments or other assistance. Work in our laboratories is supported by NSF grant DBI-0096033 and DBI-0321467 and NIH grant GM58816.

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