NSF sent word today that we have been funded as part of a team to study the function and evolution of maize centromeres. The team, led by R. Kelly Dawe,includes Jim Birchler, Jiming Jiang, and Gernot Presting. Our lab will be using a variety of approaches to study the variation in and around maize centromeres in a broad sampling of maize landraces and a number of natural populations of teosinte.