Exquisite images are featured in this use of transgenic maize plants to illustrate that mechanisms of branching in maize and Arabidopsis are conserved, and these same mechanisms can also explain the unique branches (spikelet pair meristems and spikelet meristems) found in grass inflorescences.

An SSR survey of 24 Mexican landraces and 261 CIMMYT inbred lines reveals that the CIMMYT lines capture a large proportion of the genetic diversity represented in the landraces, and therefore represent a valuable resource for genetic diversity studies. The landraces, however, do contain some unique alleles that are likely not captured in tropical or temperate inbreds, so their maintenance as a genetic resource remains imperative.

In a nice example of a developmental gene with major effects on yield, a streamlined PCR-based cloning strategy and massively parallel sequencing are used to clone and characterize the expression of a maize COBRA-like gene required for cell wall expansion in root hairs.

This paper confirms the effect of Vgt1 on flowering time across a diverse sample of maize and demonstrates association between haplotype frequencies at the gene region with latitude and altitude in landraces, suggesting its role in adaptation to environments.

A nice demonstration that maize, a day-neutral plant, has an ortholog of the Arabidopsis constans gene that retains a diurnal expression pattern. This suggests that maize domestication involved a modification, rather than the elimination of molecular pathways employed to detect and respond to day length.

Mikel and Dudley analyzed the plant variety protection (PVP) and patent databases to understand the pedigree relationships among commercial private-sector maize inbreds and public lines. This was the first paper to shed light on the derivation and relationships among proprietary lines, and this information is key now that PVP has expired on more than 100 formerly proprietary inbreds and they have become available for use without restriction.

Fungal-derived chitin has long been known as an extremely potent elicitor of plant defense responses. This paper identifies that chitin-induced signaling leading to defense activation requires the host LysM receptor-like protein supposedly likely acting as a part of the chitin receptor complex. Additionally, this study suggests a possible evolutionary relationship between the chitin and Nod factor perception mechanisms.

The authors describe a versatile promoter for driving gene expression in transgenic maize.

The authors have tracked down an important high-oil QTL gene.  The high-oil allele was then introduced into plants and shown to condition the same phenotype ectopically.  A nice story that combines sophisticated genomics with an applied goal.

This paper describes the findings that suggest that the function of the maize Hm1 resistance gene may be evolutionary conserved in other grasses to protect these plants against the lethal fungal necrotrophic pathogen Cochliobolus carbonum.

A typically elegant demonstration of the effects of retrotransposon clusters on recombination frequency in maize. The authors found a general inverse relationship between the frequencies of crossovers and heterologies for very closely linked markers.

This paper supports the idea that centromeric (kinetochore) domains are very different from flanking pericentromeric regions. A variety of evidence suggests that centromere cores support transcription and lack nearly all features of classical heterochromatin.

The maize genome keeps getting weirder! Lough et al. identified numerous large mitochondrial insertions in the B73 genome with FISH. Then they surveyed several other common maize lines and found tremendous variability among inbreds for presence and absence of a large number of mitochondrial insertions.

This is a nice summary of why switchgrass is receiving so much attention. They emphasize that while maize is not as efficient as switchgrass for this purpose, it serves as a model for how to improve and manage a grass crop.

The value of this study is that : 1. It describes for the first time (for any plant lipoxygenases) that a root-expressed lipoxygenase has a function in suppressing basal defense responses mediated by all three major hormones (salicylic acid, jasmonic acid and ethylene) in roots presumably to allow the maize seed to germinate and grow normally. 2. This is the first ever report providing genetic evidence for a function of a lipoxygenase in resistance to nematodes.