About the Cover
On the Cover: The cover of the first Special Grass Issue (March 2001) featured a painting of rice (Oryza sativa cv Nipponbare) by the artist Dorset Trapnell, a graduate student in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Georgia. Since the publication of that special issue, rough drafts of the genomic sequences of two rice subspecies, japonica and indica, have been published. These landmark efforts heralded the start of the genomics era for rice and for its relatives in the Gramineae (grass) family including maize, barley, sorghum, and wheat. For this special issue, Dorset Trapnell has drawn an ear of corn (Zea mays) with a spotted kernel phenotype. Analyses of spotted kernel phenotypes led to the discovery of transposable elements by Barbara McClintock and contributed to making corn a model genetic organism. We have chosen an ear of maize to grace the cover of this second Special Grass Issue to celebrate the recent initiation of the Maize Genome Sequencing Project, a consortium of pilot projects that are selectively sequencing the genome of maize.
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Copyright © 2007 by the American Society of Plant Biologists
