Solving the Maze

Almost 400 years after Native Americans introduced maize to the pilgrims and joined in celebrating what would become an annual day of giving thanks for the bounty of the harvest, insights from the maize genome sequence, reported on page 1112 (1) of this issue by Schnable et al., will pave the way for sequencing other economically important crops. Vielle-Calzada et al. on page 1078 (2), Swanson-Wagner et al. on page 1118 (3), and Gore et al. on page 1115 (4) describe the immediate exploitation of the maize genome sequence. These and companion studies (5) represent a milestone in genetics and plant biology, as well as the crowning achievement of a group of corn growers and scientists who envisioned changing the world of agriculture