Population Genomics of Copy Number Variation in a Natural Population of Teosinte

Structure variation is common in plant genomes. Even within the single inbred line B73 many duplicate gene blocks can be found. Among different maize inbred lines, for example, bronze (bz) locus show remarkable haplotype diversity. Any two of the bz haplotypes share only 50% of their sequence. Whole genome scan of copy number variation (CNV) has been done in many plant species. In maize genome, many technologies have been used to look at copy number variation in a variety of ways, and extensive structure variation has been discovered. However, none of these studies focus on nature populations. We sampled 70 teosinte (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis) individuals from single nature population near Palmar Chico in the Balsas river region. We asked two major questions in this study: 1) How many of the genome varies in a single population? 2) What are the evolutionary consequence of CNV?