An adaptive teosinte mexicana introgression modulates phosphatidylcholine levels and is associated with maize flowering time

This was an extremely ambitious papers and my hats off to my coauthors, especially Allison, Fausto, Karla, Ruairidh, and Ruben who worked tirelessly to tie this all together. This is really a textbook documentation of something we know has been an important driver of crop adaptation: introgression from wild, feral, or native relatives. Despite knowing that the phenomenon occurs, folks have rarely been able to nail it down to the causal genes and the biochemical context that mediates their adaptive benefits. To achieve this my collaborators did a tremendous amount of work in isolating loci, testing isolation lines in experimental gardens, and they even used CRISPR - a technology that had only just began maturing in the crop genetics world when most of the work was being conducted.

I can’t wait to see what else comes of the system they’ve built for themselves; and I do think the depth and novelty of this research like this cannot be understated in its importance for meeting the challenges that will face our planet as climates change and societies rush to adapt.