Our
understanding of basic biology and our ability to genetically
manipulate organisms for their improvement will depend to a large
extent on our understanding of developmental, genetic, and metabolic
processes which are fundamental to organisms. One of the major
challenges in molecular biology is the isolation of genes in which the
biochemical function of the gene product is unknown. In a number of
species, genes controlling a wide range of fundamental developmental
and metabolic processes have been identified by mutational analysis
and placed on classical genetic linkage maps. Thus, sequencing of the
whole genome become very important. Genome project, or large-scale
sequencing, of an organism is a task that takes a lot of manpower,
time and money. The genome sequencing information of many different
organisms are currently available in database, including human,
nematode, fruit fly, Arabidopsis and many microorganisms.
An
international rice genome sequencing project, IRGSP, is initiated
three years ago, and the primary goal is the complete sequence of
rice. The reasons people choose rice as the material as the first crop
for genome sequencing project are: (1) rice is an important crop in
the world; (2) the genome size of rice is 430 Mb, the smallest one
among crops; (3) linkage maps and physical maps of rice have been
established and many EST sequences have been registered; (4) the
transgenic rice technology has been established; (5) rice shares a
co-linear gene organization with other cereal grasses, thus rice is a
key to knowledge of the genomic organization of the other grasses.
There
are 12 chromosomes in rice. The scientists in Japan and USA prepared
PAC and BAC libraries, carried out end-sequencing, EST mapping and
fingerprinting. Members of IRGSP would then take these clones and
perform large-scale sequencing. We are now working on the sequencing
of rice chromosome number 5. A central lab, designate Academia Sinica
Plant Genome Center or ASPGC, has been established. This program is
supported by National Science Council, Council of Agriculture,
Academia Sinica and Institute of Botany.
For
genome sequencing, we perform subcloning, sequencing, alignment,
analysis and registration for each PAC/BAC clone. The size of
chromosome 5 is 35 Mb, and the draft is expected to be finished by the
end of 2002. We have registered about 4 Mb sequence data up to now. In
the mean time, we also carry out rice functional genomics research,
including EST, SAGE, and insertional mutagenesis.
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The rice field in
our campus
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