John Doebley

The paper develops a maize nested association mapping population (TeoNAM) to identify QTLs for domestication and agronomic traits, finding novel teosinte alleles and confirming a rice gene's role in maize tillering.

The paper describes a transgenerational epigenetic decline in vigor and viability in maize-teosinte backcross populations, termed 'hybrid decay', characterized by genomic instability and altered gene expression.

The paper investigates purging dynamics in selfed maize lines, finding increased homozygosity and genome size reduction due to purging of deleterious variants and transposable elements.