Gene, Centromere and Transposon Evolution In Maize and Its Panicoid Relatives

Flowering plant genomes tend to be large and complex.  However, for reasons of cost and feasibility, smallish genomes have been preferentially targeted for analysis.  A recent shift to shotgun analysis with next generation sequencing tools has increased the already significant bias towards avoiding the challenging parts of the genome, like pericentromeric heterochromatin.  I will presents results from three different sets of comparative genomics studies to investigate the dynamics of genic, non-genic and centromeric regions of the genomes of several panicoid grasses.  These studies indicate that the rates and nature of genomic instability can be quantified, that different species have different rates of instability and different biases towards particular types of instability, and that the outcomes of this instability can be anywhere from trivial to profound, depending on the species and genomic region investigated.