Narrator: This is Science Today. Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have identified a gene in maize that may have been critical to the Mesoamericans' development of the stalk-like corn plant from its wild, bushy ancestor called teosinte. Robert Schmidt, who led the research team, says the transformation of teosinte into modern maize was one of the landmark events in human agriculture.

Schmidt: Probably this took place, they estimate, probably seven thousand years ago and exactly how this occurred is not known. But studies by other labs have been able to demonstrate that there are probably about five regions in the maize genome that played a significant role in developing modern maize from teosinte.

Narrator: One of those regions lies on top of a gene called barrenstalk 1, which affects branching. With the help of an expert, Schmidt's team demonstrated that all modern maize inbreds have just one form of this gene. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.