2017 年 4 月 6 日，Genome Reseaerch 杂志在线发表了一篇关于水稻群体遗传学分析的论文。北京遗传发育所的汪鸿儒和哥本哈根大学的 Filipe G. Vieira 为第一作者，北京遗传发育所的储成才和加州大学伯克利分校的 Rasmus Nielsen 为论文共同通讯作者。这篇论文的主要结论为：亚洲野生水稻是具有广泛基因流的杂交群，是从驯化水稻野化而来的。

水稻的驯化历史仍是有争议的，多个研究对水稻的起源有不同的结论。这些研究通常假设现存的野生水稻群体 Oryza rufipogon 是产生驯化水稻的祖先群体的后代，但很少注意这些野生群体自身的起源和历史。这篇论文通过分析 203 个驯化水稻品种和 435 个野生水稻品种的基因组，研究了野生水稻的遗传祖先。

这篇论文研究发现多数现代的野生水稻与驯化水稻通过花粉和种子介导的基因流混合的很严重。事实上，可以大胆假设野生水稻也许仅仅代表着驯化水稻野化的不同阶段。与这一假设相符的是，在前人鉴定的驯化基因中，许多假定的野生水稻品种表现出选择性清除的残迹，另外还有开花基因在近期选择的证据，这些可能与野化过程相关。此外，从 aus, indica 和 japonica 进入同一地点的基因流存在明显的地理模式。研究还发现 aus 和 indica 的混合比 japonica 的基因流更近，可能与一次早期的 japonica 品种的扩散事件一致。这篇论文提出野生水稻群体应该被认为是一个杂交群，通过持续的、广泛的基因流与驯化水稻相连。

术语：

feralization: 野化，植物或动物从人工环境返回自然环境的过程，也称为“去驯化”（de-domestication）。

The domestication history of rice remains controversial, with multiple studies reaching different conclusions regarding its origin(s). These studies have generally assumed that populations of living wild rice, O. rufipogon, are descendants of the ancestral population that gave rise to domesticated rice, but relatively little attention has been paid to the origins and history of wild rice itself. Here, we investigate the genetic ancestry of wild rice by analyzing a diverse panel of rice genomes consisting of 203 domesticated and 435 wild rice accessions. We show that most modern wild rice is heavily admixed with domesticated rice through both pollen- and seed-mediated gene flow. In fact, much presumed wild rice may simply represent different stages of feralized domesticated rice. In line with this hypothesis, many presumed wild rice varieties show remnants of the effects of selective sweeps in previously identified domestication genes, as well as evidence of recent selection in flowering genes possibly associated with the feralization process. Furthermore, there is a distinct geographical pattern of gene flow from aus, indica, and japonica varieties into colocated wild rice. We also show that admixture from aus and indica is more recent than gene flow from japonica, possibly consistent with an earlier spread of japonica varieties. We argue that wild rice populations should be considered a hybrid swarm, connected to domesticated rice by continuous and extensive gene flow.

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