水稻是世界上最重要的粮食作物,约1万年前开始被驯化。由于水稻与其祖先野生种存在一定的遗传分化,水稻的起源和驯化问题长期存在争议。本文综述了水稻起源和驯化方面的研究成果,特别是近年来基因组学方面的证据,认为水稻2个亚种独立起源于野生祖先种内很早就分化的不同类群,但一些驯化基因——控制重要农艺性状的基因,可能首先在一个亚种中被驯化,然后通过基因渐渗,扩散到另一个亚种中。因此,水稻驯化的关键是研究驯化基因的起源和扩散方式。随着大规模基因组测序技术的发展和相应数据分析方法的建立,在全基因组水平对水稻及其祖先进行大规模分析,已成为揭示水稻起源与驯化之谜的必由之路。
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) was domesticated about 10000 years ago and has been one of the most important food crops in the world. Owing to the genetic differentiations within and between rice and its wild ancestral species, the origin and domestication of rice have been controversial for a long time. Many previous investigations, especially recent genomic evidence suggested that two subspecies of rice originated independently from early differentiation populations of the wild ancestral species while quite a few domesticated genes associated with important agricultural traits might occur only in one subspecies at first and spread into the other one by introgression. Therefore, the origin and spreading mode of domesticated genes is crucial to understanding of the domestication of rice. Fortunately, the recent development of high-throughput genomic sequencing technologies and related approaches of population genomics offer us an opportunity to research population genetic differentiations within and between rice and its wild ancestral species at the genome scale, which has been the key to reveal the mystery of rice origin and domestication.