“This latest research, conducted with worldwide collaborations, led us to a new understanding of maize that will help enable scientists and farmers to make major improvements in one of the world’s most significant crops and gain new and important insights in plant genomic studies,” said Messing, director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The findings are presented in three papers in the journal Genome Research and one in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“An argument often cited against the introduction of external genes, a common practice in genetic engineering, suggests that it would create an unnatural instability in the genome,” said Messing. “With all the maize genes moving around by themselves in nature, perhaps conveying some selective advantage in doing so, this argument is unfounded.”

“It looks like significant evolutionary change happened in a relatively short time,” said Messing. “Because they are immobile, plants have to adapt to changes more rapidly than animals that can move to escape environmental impacts. Plants are continually faced with a variety of seasonal challenges and assaults by a series of different pests which may well lead to evolution on a fast track.”

While the findings offered in the four newly published papers provide exciting, new glimpses into the nature of maize, Messing stressed the need for the completion of a whole genome sequence, a more detailed analysis of gene expression in maize, and a better understanding of its genetic and cellular mechanisms.