Rice is considered a model species for monocotyledonous plants, which include cereals such as maize, wheat, sorghum, and barley. Rice has a relatively small genome, is diploid, is readily transformable, and has tractable genetics and a diverse germplasm. These attributes, in addition to its role as a major food source for a majority of the world's population, have resulted in the development of genetic and molecular resources focused on obtaining the complete genome sequence of rice. Not only will the complete sequence of rice provide a reservoir of genes by which to understand rice growth and development, but it will also provide a set of molecular tools to leverage sequence information to highly related species such as maize, wheat and barley, which are more recalcitrant to genomic approaches. This award will enable a total of 31.5 Mb of rice genomic sequence to be generated and released to Genbank. This sequence will be annotated using gene prediction programs, related genes within the database will be identified, and repetitive structures and sequences characterized. In addition, links between rice data and sequence, physical, and genetic information from other plant species will be generated. All of this work will be performed in conjunction with the international rice genome project.
