Department of Zoology and Genetics and Department of Statistics, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50010, USA. vbrendel@iastate.edu
The completed Arabidopsis genome seems to be of limited value as a model for maize genomics. In addition to the expansion of repetitive sequences in maize and the lack of genomic micro-colinearity, maize-specific or highly-diverged proteins contribute to a predicted maize proteome of about 50,000 proteins, twice the size of that of Arabidopsis.