The latest volume of Nature Communications (IF5year=12.0)recently published an article entitled "Genomic variation associated with local adaptation of weedy rice during de-domestication" (https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15323) by Prof. Longjiang Fan’s group from Institute of Crop Science, College of Agriculture & Biotechnology. Jie Qiu, the post-doctor in Prof. Fan’s team, is the first author of this study.
De-domestication is a unique evolutionary process by which domesticated crops are converted into ‘wild predecessor like’ forms. Weedy rice (Oryza sativa f. spontanea) is an excellent model to dissect the molecular processes underlying de-domestication. The researchers collected 155 weedy and 76 locally-cultivated rice accessions from four representative regions in China and sequenced their genomes to an average 18.2× coverage. Phylogenetic and demographic analyses indicate that Chinese weedy rice were de-domesticated independently from cultivated rice and experienced a strong genetic bottleneck. Although evolving from multiple origins, critical genes underlying convergent evolution of different weedy types were found. Allele frequency analyses suggest that standing variations and new mutations contribute differently to japonica and indica weedy rice. A Mb-scale genomic region present in weedy rice but not cultivated rice genomes was identified with evidence of balancing selection suggesting that there might be more complexity inherent to the process of de-domestication.
