Tracing the Evolution History of Rice to Improve Future Varieties

By comparing the sequences of a single gene in fourteen rice species, an international team of researchers has successfully traced the evolutionary history of the world’s most important crop. Scott Jackson from Purdue University and colleagues from the University of Arizona and the Chinese Academy of Sciences focused their attention on moc1, a gene that decides how many shoots will form on a rice plant. The team said that understanding the variations of moc1 could lead to the development of domesticated rice varieties with more branching, increased plant size or other favorable characteristics.

Jackson said that the comparison revealed how rice has changed from as far back as 14 million years ago. The scientists found that differences in the current sizes of rice genomes resulted from differences in the amplification of jumping genes. As rice adapted to climate changes and other natural circumstances, its genetic structure changed, keeping some genes and losing others. Scientists are now on a hunt for wild rice genes that can be used to breed better rice varieties.

For more information, read http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2009a/090123JacksonRice.html The open access paper published by PNAS is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1073_pnas.0812798106