Zea mays
Zea mays plant.
Information
Abbreviation:	Z. mays
Genus:	Zea
Species:	mays
Common Name:	Maize
NCBI Taxonomy ID:	4577
Other:	MaizeGDB

Zea mays

Maize, also known as corn, is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant produces pollen inflorescences and separate ovuliferous inflorescences called ears that yield kernels or seeds, which are fruits. Maize has become a staple food in many parts of the world, with the total production of maize surpassing that of wheat or rice.

Transcription factors, defined here specifically as proteins containing domains that suggest sequence-specific DNA-binding activities, are classified based on the presence of 50+ conserved domains. Links to resources that provide information on mutants available, map positions or putative functions for these transcription factors are provided. Transcription factors are being named using a standard nomenclature that will simplify references to them as well as comparative analyses between the grasses.

These proteins are broadly defined as transcriptional regulators that either act by interacting with transcription factors or as chromatin modifiers restricting or releasing DNA accessibility. Thus, GrassCoRegDB includes proteins with functions such as covalent histone modification (acetylation, methylation, phosphorylation, ubiquitination and sumoylation), as members of the ATP dependent chromatin remodeling complexes, and as histone chaperones, among others. The specific role of many of these proteins in transcription is still unknown. In some cases the community has already set-up some rules for systematic naming of those proteins, in these a protein name is reported in Grassius. For proteins lacking a systematic name, loci identifiers or common names are used instead. As identification of proteins with roles in transcriptional regulation is a growing research field, GrassCoRegDB will be frequently updated to keep pace with the literature. For this set of proteins the same curation efforts as for other Grassius collections are applied and links to other Grassius resources such as the TFome collection are available.

Maize Tools

Translation Tool

Translate Gene Model IDs

BLAST

Homology Search Tool