Arabidopsis to rice. Applying knowledge from a weed to enhance our understanding of a crop species

Although Arabidopsis is well established as the premiere model species in plant biology, rice (Oryza sativa) is moving up fast as the second-best model organism. In addition to the availability of large sets of genetic, molecular, and genomic resources, two features make rice attractive as a model species: it represents the taxonomically distinct monocots and is a crop species. Plant structural genomics was pioneered on a genome-scale in Arabidopsis and the lessons learned from these efforts were not lost on rice. Indeed, the sequence and annotation of the rice genome has been greatly accelerated by method improvements made in Arabidopsis. For example, the value of full-length cDNA clones and deep expressed sequence tag resources, obtained in Arabidopsis primarily after release of the complete genome, has been recognized by the rice genomics community. For rice >250,000 expressed sequence tags and 28,000 full-length cDNA sequences are available prior to the completion of the genome sequence. With respect to tools for Arabidopsis functional genomics, deep sequence-tagged lines, inexpensive spotted oligonucleotide arrays, and a near-complete whole genome Affymetrix array are publicly available. The development of similar functional genomics resources for rice is in progress that for the most part has been more streamlined based on lessons learned from Arabidopsis. Genomic resource development has been essential to set the stage for hypothesis-driven research, and Arabidopsis continues to provide paradigms for testing in rice to assess function across taxonomic divisions and in a crop species.     

The TIGR rice genome annotation resource: annotating the rice genome and creating resources for plant biologists

Rice is not only a major food staple for the world's population but it also is a model species for a major group of flowering plants, the monocotyledonous plants. Draft genomic sequence of two subspecies of rice, Oryza sativa spp. japonica and indica ssp. are publicly available. To provide the community with a resource to data-mine the rice genome, we have constructed an annotation resource for rice (http://www.tigr.org/tdb/e2k1/osa1/). In this resource, we have annotated the rice genome for gene content, identified motifs/domains within the predicted genes, constructed a rice repeat database, identified related sequences in other plant species, and identified syntenic sequences between rice and maize. All of the data is available through web-based interfaces, FTP downloads, and a Distributed Annotation System.     

MOsDB: an integrated information resource for rice genomics

The MIPS Rice (Oryza sativa) database (MOsDB; http://mips.gsf.de/proj/rice) provides a comprehensive data collection dedicated to the genome information of rice. Rice (O. sativa L.) is one of the most important food crops for over half the world's population and serves as a major model system in cereal genome research. MOsDB integrates data from two publicly available rice genomic sequences, O. sativa L. ssp. indica and O. sativa L. ssp. japonica. Besides regularly updated rice genome sequence information, MOsDB provides an integrated resource for associated analysis data, e.g. internal and external annotation information as well as a complex characterization of all annotated rice genes. The MOsDB web interface supports various search options and allows browsing the database content. MOsDB is continuously expanding to include an increasing range of data type and the growing amount of information on the rice genome.     

Comparative cross-species alternative splicing in plants

Alternative splicing (AS) can add significantly to genome complexity. Plants are thought to exhibit less AS than animals. An algorithm, based on expressed sequence tag (EST) pairs gapped alignment, was developed that takes advantage of the relatively small intron and exon size in plants and directly compares pairs of ESTs to search for AS. EST pairs gapped alignment was first evaluated in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), rice (Oryza sativa), and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) for which annotated genome sequence is available and was shown to accurately predict splicing events. The method was then applied to 11 plant species that include 17 cultivars for which enough ESTs are available. The results show a large, 3.7-fold difference in AS rates between plant species with Arabidopsis and rice in the lower range and lettuce (Lactuca sativa) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) in the upper range. Hence, compared to higher animals, plants show a much greater degree of variety in their AS rates and in some plant species the rates of animal and plant AS are comparable although the distribution of AS types may differ. In eudicots but not monocots, a correlation between genome size and AS rates was detected, implying that in eudicots the mechanisms that lead to larger genomes are a driving force for the evolution of AS.     

水稻中受体激酶的系统树分析

植物受体激酶(RLKs)在植物细胞内的反应中发挥着重要作用。为了比较拟南芥(Arabidopsis thaliana L.)和水稻(Oryza sativa L.)中受体激酶的进化关系,作者通过对北京华大基因研究中心(BGI)的籼稻蛋白质数据库进行BLASTP搜索,找到267个受体激酶类似基因,根据它们的胞外结构域可以将这些基因分为不同的类型。与拟南芥中受体激酶的系统树比较分析表明,不同类型的受体激酶具有不同的序列保守性,说明在植物进化过程中,不同类型的受体激酶具有不同的进化关系。水稻受体激酶与拟南芥受体激酶BRI1的多序列匹配结果也表明二者可能具有不同的磷酸化位点。     

水稻中受体激酶的系统树分析

植物受体激酶(RLKs)在植物细胞内的反应中发挥着重要作用.为了比较拟南芥(Arabidopsis thaliana L.)和水稻(Oryza sativa L.)中受体激酶的进化关系,作者通过对北京华大基因研究中心(BGI)的籼稻蛋白质数据库进行BLASTP搜索,找到267个受体激酶类似基因,根据它们的胞外结构域可以将这些基因分为不同的类型.与拟南芥中受体激酶的系统树比较分析表明,不同类型的受体激酶具有不同的序列保守性,说明在植物进化过程中,不同类型的受体激酶具有不同的进化关系.水稻受体激酶与拟南芥受体激酶BRI1的多序列匹配结果也表明二者可能具有不同的磷酸化位点.     

Genomic basis for cell-wall diversity in plants. A comparative approach to gene families in rice and Arabidopsis

Monocotyledons and dicotyledons are distinct, not only in their body plans and developmental patterns, but also in the structural features of their cell walls. The recent completion of the rice (Oryza sativa) genomic sequence and publication of the sequence data, together with the completed database of the Arabidopsis thaliana genome, provide the first opportunity to compare the full complement of cell-wall-related genes from the two distinct classes of flowering plants. We made this comparison by exploiting the fact that Arabidopsis and rice have type I and type II walls, respectively, and therefore represent the two extremes in terms of the structural features of plant cell walls. In this review article, we classify all cell-wall-related genes into 32 gene families, and generate their phylogenetic trees. Using these data, we can phylogenetically compare individual genes of particular interest between Arabidopsis and rice. This comparative genome approach shows that the differences in wall architecture in the two plant groups actually mirror the diversity of the individual gene families involved in the cell-wall dynamics of the respective plant species. This study also identifies putative rice orthologs of genes with well-defined functions in Arabidopsis and other plant species.     

Exact word matches in rice pseudomolecules.

Using pseudomolecules of assembled genomic sequence, we computed the frequencies of 6 to 24 bp oligonucleotide (oligo) "words" across the genome of rice (Oryza sativa L. subsp. japonica). All oligos of 10 or fewer basepairs were repeated at least 12 times in the genome. The percentage of unique (non-repeated) oligos ranged from 0.1% for 12 bp oligos to 76.0% for 24 bp oligos. For three 200 kb regions, we annotated each nucleotide position with the genome-wide frequency of the 18 bp oligo starting at that position. These frequencies formed landscapes consisting of high- and low-frequency zones. Low-frequency zones contained occasional high-frequency spikes; these may represent footprints of RIM2 transposon activity. BLASTn searches of high-frequency non-SSR (simple sequence repeat) 18 bp oligos returned few sequences from species other than rice. These results demonstrate that, in rice, words are not randomly used between different regions within the same genome, and indicate that words that are frequently repeated within the rice genome tend to be unique to rice.     

Structure and architecture of the maize genome

Maize (Zea mays or corn) plays many varied and important roles in society. It is not only an important experimental model plant, but also a major livestock feed crop and a significant source of industrial products such as sweeteners and ethanol. In this study we report the systematic analysis of contiguous sequences of the maize genome. We selected 100 random regions averaging 144 kb in size, representing about 0.6% of the genome, and generated a high-quality dataset for sequence analysis. This sampling contains 330 annotated genes, 91% of which are supported by expressed sequence tag data from maize and other cereal species. Genes averaged 4 kb in size with five exons, although the largest was over 59 kb with 31 exons. Gene density varied over a wide range from 0.5 to 10.7 genes per 100 kb and genes did not appear to cluster significantly. The total repetitive element content we observed (66%) was slightly higher than previous whole-genome estimates (58%-63%) and consisted almost exclusively of retroelements. The vast majority of genes can be aligned to at least one sequence read derived from gene-enrichment procedures, but only about 30% are fully covered. Our results indicate that much of the increase in genome size of maize relative to rice (Oryza sativa) and Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) is attributable to an increase in number of both repetitive elements and genes.