Genetic dissection of a genomic region with pleiotropic effects on domestication traits in maize reveals multiple linked QTL

The domesticated crop maize and its wild progenitor, teosinte, have been used in numerous experiments to investigate the nature of divergent morphologies. This study examines a poorly understood region on the fifth chromosome of maize associated with a number of traits under selection during domestication using a QTL mapping population specific to the fifth chromosome. In contrast with other major domestication loci in maize where large effect, highly pleiotropic, single genes are responsible for phenotypic effects, our study found the region on chromosome five fractionates into multiple QTL regions, none with singularly large effects. The smallest 1.5 LOD support interval for a QTL contained 54 genes, one of which was a MADS MIKCC transcription factor, a family of proteins implicated in many developmental programs. We also used simulated trait datasets to investigate the power of our mapping population to identify QTL for which there is a single underlying causal gene. This analys...