Rice is an important crop species and serves as a model for the study of a number of agriculturally important cereals such as maize (corn), wheat, sorghum, barley and oats. Rice has a small genome and an advanced draft of the genome is publicly available with the anticipated completion of a finished genome in late 2004. While DNA sequence is valuable, it is the annotation of the sequence that greatly improves it utility to biologists. The annotation of the rice genome is the focus of this project. Genes, functions and other features will be identified in the rice genome and made publicly available through a project web site and database. These data will be valuable in understanding not only rice but also important cereal species. A second focus of this project is to contribute to the finishing of the rice genome as part of the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project.
Annotated rice genomic sequence generated by the project will be available at www.tigr.org/tdb/e2k1/osa1/.
