The genomic origin of early maize in eastern North America

Jazmín Ramos-Madrigal; Gayle J Fritz; Bryon Schroeder; Bruce Smith; Fátima Sánchez-Barreiro; Christian Carøe; Anne Kathrine Wiborg Runge; Sarah Boer; Krista McGrath; Filipe G Vieira; Shanlin Liu; Rute R da Fonseca; Chunxue Guo; Guojie Zhang; Bent Petersen; Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén; Shyam Gopalakrishnan; M Thomas P Gilbert; Nathan Wales

doi:10.1016/j.cell.2024.11.003

The genomic origin of early maize in eastern North America

Cell. 2024 Nov 26:S0092-8674(24)01277-7. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.11.003. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Jazmín Ramos-Madrigal¹, Gayle J Fritz², Bryon Schroeder³, Bruce Smith⁴, Fátima Sánchez-Barreiro⁵, Christian Carøe⁵, Anne Kathrine Wiborg Runge⁶, Sarah Boer⁶, Krista McGrath⁶, Filipe G Vieira⁷, Shanlin Liu⁸, Rute R da Fonseca⁹, Chunxue Guo¹⁰, Guojie Zhang¹¹, Bent Petersen¹², Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén¹², Shyam Gopalakrishnan¹³, M Thomas P Gilbert¹⁴, Nathan Wales¹⁵

Affiliations

¹ Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark. Electronic address: [email protected].
² Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
³ Center for Big Bend Studies, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, TX 79832, USA.
⁴ Program in Human Ecology and Archaeobiology, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA.
⁵ Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁶ Department of Archaeology, University of York, York 10 5DD, UK.
⁷ Section for Geogenetics, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1350 Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁸ Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 10059378, China.
⁹ Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate (CMEC), Center for Global Mountain Biodiversity, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁰ BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 10059378, China.
¹¹ Center of Evolutionary & Organismal Biology, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310058, China.
¹² Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark; Centre of Excellence for Omics-Driven Computational Biodiscovery (COMBio), Faculty of Applied Sciences, AIMST University, Bedong, Kedah 08100, Malaysia.
¹³ Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark; Bioinformatics, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁴ Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark; University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7012 Trondheim, Norway.
¹⁵ Department of Archaeology, University of York, York 10 5DD, UK. Electronic address: [email protected].

PMID: 39637852
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.11.003

Abstract

Indigenous maize varieties from eastern North America have played an outsized role in breeding programs, yet their early origins are not fully understood. We generated paleogenomic data to reconstruct how maize first reached this region and how it was selected during the process. Genomic ancestry analyses reveal recurrent movements northward from different parts of Mexico, likely culminating in at least two dispersals from the US Southwest across the Great Plains to the Ozarks and beyond. We find that 1,000-year-old Ozark specimens carry a highly differentiated wx1 gene, which is involved in the synthesis of amylose, highlighting repeated selective pressures on the starch metabolic pathway throughout maize's domestication. This population shows a close affinity with the lineage that ultimately became the Northern Flints, a major contributor to modern commercial maize.

Keywords: ancient DNA; domestication; evolution; maize; maize genomics; paleogenomics; starch pathway; wx1.