Isozymes are one of the important biochemical indexes for examining relationships of plants. In our laboratory, we used 160 materials, including 119 of Chinese waxy maize, 21 of American dent waxy, 15 of Coix genus materials, 5 of teosinte and Tripsacum. Leaf and endosperm were examined. The experimental results proved that analysis of the zymograms of the peroxidases and malate dehydrogenases help to examine the relationship of waxy maize which originated from China.
The peroxidase isozymes of different tissues of different developmental
stages in maize can be separated into 10-19 bands by polyacrylamide gel
electrophoresis. But the fourth and fifth anodal bands (calculated from
cathodal pole to anodal pole) were mainly a pair of specific bands of the
green tissues (including leaf, sheath, shoot and husk, etc.). The relative
activities of the fourth and fifth bands were similar to each other.
Results obtained from the detection of peroxidase isozymes showed that
86.6% of the waxy maize varieties (or inbred lines) from China show the
fifth band, while 85.7% of dent waxy maize (including dent maize) from
America show the fourth band (Table 1). In other words, the fifth band
is the marker band of Chinese waxy maize, while the fourth band is the
marker band of the dent waxy maize from America.
On the basis of phenotype, segregations of single cross combinations, F2, and BC1 can be deduced, so that the fifth and fourth bands of the peroxidase are genetically controlled by a locus with codominant alleles (Table 2 and Figure 1, 2).
Table 1. Comparison of peroxidase isozyme patterns of waxy maize from China and dent waxy maize (including dent) from America.
Table 2. The fourth and fifth band segregations of the peroxidase isozymes.
Fig. 1. The segregations of the fourth, fourth+fifth, and fifth isozyme bands in the leaf tissue of (Ai- x Tang +) F2, showing 1:2:1 ratio.
Fig. 2. The segregations of the fourth, fourth+fifth, and fifth isozyme bands in the leaf tissue of [(Huangzao 4 x Loxi3) x Huangzao 4] BC1, showing 1:1:0 ratio.
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