Tag Archives: domestication

Journal Club: Cultivated sweet potatoes were genetically modified — naturally

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Charles Choi

The first genetically modified foods were not human creations. Scientists have now found that sweet potatoes all over the world naturally contain bacterial genes that the microbes introduced. Such transgenes may have provided attractive traits for domestication, researchers added. The … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Genetic detective work suggests a crucial role for Maya in papaya domestication

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Charles Choi

Papaya is a multimillion-dollar crop with a complicated sex life. Now plant geneticist Ray Ming at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his colleagues find that hermaphrodite papayas, the version most useful to farmers, most likely arose due to … Continue reading →