However, the evolutionary origins and domestication processes of cultivated rice have long been debated.
Moreover, the divergence in cultivated accession was significantly higher than that in wild accessions (t-test, P < 0.05), which implies that the LRR domains in cultivated accession might have been diversified during the process of cultivation.
Understanding the diversity pattern of the ammonium transporter gene in rice not only provides valuable information on the allelic distribution of the nitrogen-uptake gene, but also gives important insights into the process of domestication of cultivated rice.
In addition to a decreased effective population size during the process of domestication of cultivated rice, it is likely that mutation rates of microsatellites in rice may have become small in comparison to wild progenitor.
There are emerging evidences that the process of evolution of cultivated bananas might have not derived simply by hybridization followed by selection and clonal propagation ("single-step domestication"), but, on occasions, episodes of meiosis, recombination and fertilization might have eventually occurred [ 5, 66, 71].
We have initiated a study in which we follow the genetic process of introgression from cultivated lettuce (Lactuca sativa L). to its wild relative prickly lettuce (Lactuca serriola L).
This integration must have occurred after the domestication process when human exchanges of varieties of cultivated rice (and associated weeds) were intense between Asia and Africa, strongly disturbing the natural habitat of the species.
Finally, we specifically predict that commensal house sparrows would have larger, more robust beaks and skull features associated with a more robust muscle and jaw architecture compared to the non-commensal P. d. bactrianus, as adaptations to process the larger and tougher seeds of cultivated cereal crops.
Crop-related weeds have evolved through different kinds of processes (Londo and Schaal 2007): colonization of cultivated fields by plants from wild populations (e.g. wild rice taxa in Asia, Ellstrand 2003), crop-wild hybridization (Arnold 2004; Boudry et al. 1993), reversion of cultivated plants to wild habits (e.g. some weedy rice, Vaughan et al. 2005).
The general processes leading to the escape and persistence of cultivated species on field margins are still poorly investigated.
