Mutations play a pivotal role in shaping the trajectory and outcomes of a species evolution and domestication. Maize (Zea mays) has been a major staple crop and model for genetic research for more than 100 yr. With the arrival of site-directed mutagenesis and genome editing (GE) driven by the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR), maize mutational research is once again in the spotlight. If we combine the powerful physiological and genetic characteristics of maize with the already available and ever increasing toolbox of CRISPR-Cas, prospects for its future trait engineering are very promising. This review aimed to give an overview of the progression and learnings of maize screening studies analyzing forward genetics, natural variation and reverse genetics to focus on recent GE approaches. We will highlight how each strategy and resource has contributed to our understanding of maize natural and induced trait variability and how this information could be used to design the next generation of mutational screenings.

中文翻译：

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玉米突变体筛选：从经典方法到基于 CRISPR 的新方法


突变在塑造物种进化和驯化的轨迹和结果方面起着关键作用。玉米 （Zea mays） 100 多年来一直是主要的主食作物和遗传研究的模型。随着由成簇规则间隔短回文重复序列 （CRISPR） 驱动的定点诱变和基因组编辑 （GE） 的到来，玉米突变研究再次成为人们关注的焦点。如果我们将玉米强大的生理和遗传特性与已经可用且不断增长的 CRISPR-Cas 工具箱相结合，其未来性状工程的前景将非常有希望。本综述旨在概述玉米筛选研究的进展和学习，分析正向遗传学、自然变异和反向遗传学，以关注最近的 GE 方法。我们将重点介绍每种策略和资源如何有助于我们理解玉米自然和诱导性状变异性，以及如何利用这些信息来设计下一代突变筛选。