Zea mays subsp. mays RefSeq Genome. Zea mays subsp. mays

Multiple mitochondrial genotypes are known to exist in the corn breeding stocks (reviewed in Leaver CJ et al.; Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 1988 319: 165-176). These mitochondrial genotypes are called cytotypes. Cytotypes were shown to have cytotype-specific restriction maps [(Levings CS, Pring DR 1976), (Pring DR, Levings CS 1978)]. Subsequent work showed that part of the cytotype-specific restriction maps was the consequence of mitochondrial genome rearrangement [(Dewey RE et al. 1987),(Fauron C and Havlik M; Curr. Genet. 1989 15: 149-154), (Fauron C, Casper M 1994), (Fauron C et al. 1995), (Zabala G et al. 1997), reviewed in Fauron C, Allen JO, Clifton S and Newton KJ; 2004 Plant mitochondrial genomes, pp. 155-171 in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of Plant Organelles, edited by Daniell H and Chase C. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, The Netherlands]. To further understand the phylogenetic relationships among corn and it's progenitors, the nucleotide sequence of the mitochondrial genome has been determined for all of the cytotypes present in US corn breeding stocks as well as five close relatives of domesticated corn. In addition to the use in corn breeding, these also increase the data that can be brought to bear upon questions such as the origin and evolution of domesticated corn, the functional consequences of mitochondrial genome size variation between plants and animals, comparative genomics among plant mitochondria [(Marechal-Drouard L et al. 1993), (Adams KL et al. 2001), (Allen JO et al. 2007), (Kubo T, Newton KJ 2008)], and the role of intergenic regions in the evolution of mitochondrial genomes (Palmer JD et al. 2000).