360 tomato genomes and not a lot of sequence variation. So, tomatoes are highly inbreed - but we know that they also show lots of variation in color, flavor, size etc. This combination suggests that the two rounds of tomato breeding by humans (wild to cherry to big) were largely processed at the epigenetic, and not genetic, level. Which is to say, humans were selecting for traits that arose not by lots of DNA mutation but by (mostly) changes in the accessibility and activation of different genes to produce their associated protein. This accessibility is controlled by a small set of proteins and other factors that can influence many genes and large-scale chromosome regions. But Im not sure I understand epigenetics - if anyone has a better explanation - and with less jargon...!
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 15:09:05 +0000
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