2012年第11期《遗传》封面说明

作物的驯化是人类从开始种植和储存的野生作物中选择优良性状，使之形态特征适应于农业生产方向进化的过程，因此，大部分种子作物驯化后在落粒性、种子休眠和植株形态等方面都出现了相似的变化。水稻是研究谷类作物驯化的良好模式生物。稻属包含2种栽培稻，分别为亚洲栽培稻(Oryza sativa L.)和非洲栽培稻(O. glaberrima Steud.)，其中亚洲栽培稻遍布全世界，包含两个主要亚种，粳稻亚种(O. sativa L. ssp. japonica)和籼稻亚种(O. sativa L. ssp. indica)。稻属丰富的近缘种和广泛的地域分布非常有利于研究确定现代栽培稻的驯化地域。此外，水稻基因组较小、具高质量精细图谱，加上功能基因研究上的进展，也为深入开展水稻驯化进程研究奠定了基础。详见本期第XX-XX页区树俊，汪鸿儒，储成才“亚洲栽培稻主要驯化性状研究进展”，对水稻关键驯化性状研究进行的比较全面的综述。封面图中央是选取23株AA基因组的亚洲栽培稻及其近缘野生稻，利用水稻驯化过程中受到选择的控制稻壳颜色基因Bh4上下游各50 kb中的SNP位点所构建的进化树；图外从左下至右下沿顺时针方向，反映的是水稻驯化过程中稻壳颜色、谷粒形状、穗型的变化趋势。 区树俊，汪鸿儒，储成才（绘图：区树俊）

The Cover story description

Domestication is the process whereby wild ancestors of animals or plants are changed at the phenotypic and genotypic level through a process of artificial selection, in order to accentuate traits that benefithuman beings. For most seed crops, this process leads to quite similar phenotypic changes, such as loss of shattering, weakened dormancy and compact plant architecture. From viewpoint of diversity, domestication is a process with genetic diversity reduced.The Oryza genus contains 22 species and distributes worldwide, which has two cultivated species, Asian rice (Oryza sativa L.) and African rice (O. glaberrima Steud.). Asian rice spreads all over the world with two major subspecies, japonica (O. sativa L. ssp. japonica) and indica (O. sativa L. ssp. indica). This feature makes rice an excellent model for elucidating cereal domestication. Ou et al (pages 1379-89) makes a comprehensive review on the progress in molecular mechanisms of rice domestication traits.Bh4 controls the husk color and has undergone selection in rice domestication. In the middle of cover image of this issue, the phylogenetic tree was constructed by using SNPs within 100Kb of the genomic region around Bh4 gene locus with 23 Asian rice and its wild relatives of AA genome. The outer part of images shows the representative changes of husk color, seed shape, and panicle type of rice under domestication process in the clockwise direction.