We’ve been almost silent on the massive effort this past week announcing the full sequence of the corn (maize) genome, mostly because we don’t actually have that much to contribute. Corn News Central this past week has been James and the Giant Corn; here’s his summary post. One of the things he linked to was a video of Patrick Schnable, one of the lead scientists, explaining what they did, how they did it and why they did it — at least in part — in under 4 minutes. I think it’s instructive.
I’m looking forward to reading about how the full sequence illuminates the domestication of corn, which I’ve read it does.