Electrophoretic and immunological characterization of pollen protein ofZea mays races

TLDR: Electrophoretic and serological studies with proteins extracted from the pollen of 12 races of maize have proved valuable in distinguishing among these races, with the most notable being that Chalqueno appeared the most dissimilar of the races studied and that Dulce showed high similarity to Palomero Toluqueño.

Abstract: Electrophoretic and serological studies with proteins extracted from the pollen of 12 races of maize (Zea mays) have proved valuable in distinguishing among these races. Both sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and double immunodffusion (Ouchterlony method) were used to analyze the extracted pollen proteins. Jaccard's similarity coefficient was calculated from the data generated by 2-state scoring of the band patterns obtained in each system. Average linkage cluster analysis of the similarity matrices was used to construct phenograms illustrating the similarity among the extracts. The racial groupings indicated in these pheno grams, when compared with those of several morphological studies, show some general agreement. However, there are differences, the most notable being that Chalqueno appeared the most dissimilar of the races studied and that Dulce showed high similarity to Palomero Toluqueno, rather than being an exceptional race as it is usually considered. The possible bearing of the groupings of the races in these phenograms with respect to genetic lineage and selection of maize is discussed.