Patterns of Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms in Corn, Barley and Rice

DNA restriction fragment length polymorphisms in samples of barley, corn and rice were assayed using a large number of probe/enzyme combinations. A comparison of two statistics, i.e., number of alleles per locus and the level of diversity per polymorphic probe/enzyme combination, showed that corn was genetically much more polymorphic than barley and rice. Such differences are likely to reflect different amounts of variations conserved in the species gene pools. A correlation analysis indicated that both inserption/deletion and base pair substitution types of molecular events are involved in the restriction fragment variations of these three species.