Summary: It is still an open question as to whether genome size (GS) variation is shaped by natural selection. One approach to address this question is a population‐level survey that assesses both the variation in GS and the relationship of GS to ecological variants. We assessed GS in Zea mays, a species that includes the cultivated crop, maize, and its closest wild relatives, the teosintes. We measured GS in five plants of each of 22 maize landraces and 21 teosinte populations from Mexico sampled from parallel altitudinal gradients. GS was significantly smaller in landraces than in teosintes, but the largest component of GS variation was among landraces and among populations. In maize, GS correlated negatively with altitude; more generally, the best GS predictors were linked to geography. By contrast, GS variation in teosintes was best explained by temperature and precipitation. Overall, our results further document the size flexibility of the Zea genome, but also point to a drastic shift in patterns of GS variation since domestication. We argue that such patterns may reflect the indirect action of selection on GS, through a multiplicity of phenotypes and life‐history traits.

Transposable elements (TEs) compose the majority of angiosperm DNA. Plants counteract TE activity by silencing them epigenetically. One form of epigenetic silencing requires 21-22 nt small interfering RNAs that act to degrade TE mRNA and may also trigger DNA methylation. DNA methylation is reinforced by a second mechanism, the RNA-dependent DNA methylation (RdDM) pathway. RdDM relies on 24 nt small interfering RNAs and ultimately establishes TEs in a quiescent state. These host factors interact at a systems level, but there have been no system level analyses of their interactions. Here, we define a deterministic model that represents the propagation of active TEs, aspects of the host response and the accumulation of silenced TEs. We describe general properties of the model and also fit it to biological data in order to explore two questions. The first is why two overlapping pathways are maintained, given that both are likely energetically expensive. Under our model, RdDM silenced TEs effectively even when the initiation of silencing was weak. This relationship implies that only a small amount of RNAi is needed to initiate TE silencing, but reinforcement by RdDM is necessary to efficiently counter TE propagation. Second, we investigated the reliance of the host response on rates of TE deletion. The model predicted that low levels of deletion lead to few active TEs, suggesting that silencing is most efficient when methylated TEs are retained in the genome, thereby providing one explanation for the large size of plant genomes.

Most angiosperm nuclear DNA is repetitive and derived from silenced transposable elements (TEs). TE silencing requires substantial resources from the plant host, including the production of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). Thus, the interaction between TEs and siRNAs is a critical aspect of both the function and the evolution of plant genomes. Yet the co-evolutionary dynamics between these two entities remain poorly characterized. Here we studied the organization of TEs within the maize (Zea mays ssp mays) genome, documenting that TEs fall within three groups based on the class and copy numbers. These groups included DNA elements, low copy RNA elements and higher copy RNA elements. The three groups varied statistically in characteristics that included length, location, age, siRNA expression and 24∶22 nucleotide (nt) siRNA targeting ratios. In addition, the low copy retroelements encompassed a set of TEs that had previously been shown to decrease expression within a 24 nt siRNA biogenesis mutant (mop1). To investigate the evolutionary dynamics of the three groups, we estimated their abundance in two landraces, one with a genome similar in size to that of the maize reference and the other with a 30% larger genome. For all three accessions, we assessed TE abundance as well as 22 nt and 24 nt siRNA content within leaves. The high copy number retroelements are under targeted similarly by siRNAs among accessions, appear to be born of a rapid bust of activity, and may be currently transpositionally dead or limited. In contrast, the lower copy number group of retrolements are targeted more dynamically and have had a long and ongoing history of transposition in the maize genome. Because transposable elements (TEs) constitute most angiosperm nuclear DNA, the interaction between TEs and their host genome is a key component for understanding the function and evolution of plant genomes. The diversity of the host response has been studied a great deal, including the biogenesis of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) that target TEs for epigenetic modifications. However, little is known about variation in TE content among closely related genomes and whether siRNA expression tracks this variation. To that end, we surveyed both the copy number and the siRNA targeting of more than 1500 distinct TE subfamilies in the B73 maize reference genome. These surveys indicated that TE subfamilies fall naturally into three distinctive groups based on their class and copy number, but these groups also differ with respect to their location in the genome, their age, their expression and their siRNA regulation. The presence and consistency of these TE groups was also assessed in two genetically distant maize landraces with contrasting genome sizes. The variation in siRNA targeting across different TE groups and families, as well as the lack of correlation between TE and siRNA abundances, argues for the existence of multiple mechanisms and strategies for TE silencing.

In the present article, we introduce a phase-field model for thin-film growth with anisotropic step energy, attachment kinetics, and diffusion, with second-order (thin-interface) corrections. We are mainly interested in the limit in which kinetic anisotropy dominates, and hence we study how the expected shape of a crystallite, which in the long-time limit is the kinetic Wulff shape, is modified by anisotropic diffusion. We present results that prove that anisotropic diffusion plays an important, counterintuitive role in the evolving crystal shape, and we add second-order corrections to the model that provide a significant increase in accuracy for small supersaturations. We also study the effect of different crystal symmetries and discuss the influence of the deposition rate.

A global bifurcation of the blue sky catastrophe type has been found in a small Prandtl number binary mixture contained in a laterally heated cavity. The system has been studied numerically applying the tools of bifurcation theory. The catastrophe corresponds to the destruction of an orbit which, for a large range of Rayleigh numbers, is the only stable solution. This orbit is born in a global saddle-loop bifurcation and becomes chaotic in a period-doubling cascade just before its disappearance at the blue sky catastrophe.