Origination and Establishment of a Trigenic Reproductive Isolation System in Rice

Reproductive isolation is both the indicator and a primary force of speciation, and plays a key role in maintaining species identity. Understanding the origin and mechanisms of reproductive isolation is of fundamental importance in evolutionary biology. In recent years, a number of genes that induce reproductive barriers have been identified in several model organisms such as Drosophila, rodents, yeast, Arabidopsis, rice, and other species, which has greatly advanced our understanding of the mechanisms regulating reproductive isolation (Maheshwari and Barbash, 2011; Ouyang and Zhang, 2013; Chae et al., 2014; Lafon-Placette and Kohler, 2015 for a review).