200,000 Rice Mutants Available for Study

Filed in archive Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics on March 6, 2009

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Scientists are organizing a repository of genetically modified rice plants in the hope of understanding the function of the approximately 57,000 genes that make up the rice genome. Two hundred thousand rice mutants are now available and have been mapped.

More than 2 million rice mutants were generated in this project and the diversity of the available plants suits many of the experimental objectives of researchers looking at rice and other commercially important grasses. Mapping of the remaining genes from this population will be required to complete the resource. Many of them will be smaller genes less amenable to mutation that will pose significant challenges for researchers as they continue their work.

Details of this work has been published in Plant Physiology 149(1): 165-170.