New clues into the mechanisms of rice domestication

Domestication of rice involved incorporation of specific yield-related changes in wild species of rice. This agricultural process has been of significant interest for plant biologists. The recent advance in genomics has provided new tools to investigate the genetic basis and consequences of domestication. Several genes involved in domestication and diversification process have been characterized, and as expected, this list is over-represented by transcription factors and their cofactors. Most often the modification orchestrated expression levels of genes such as those coding for transcription factors. It has been proposed that transcriptional regulators and their regulation is likely a major theme controlling morphological differences between crops and their progenitors. However, recent data indicate that single amino acid changes in genes coding for key proteins as well as epigenetic and small RNA-mediated pathways also contributed towards domesticationassociated phenotypes.