Rice
Background Minimal information exists on whole-plant dynamics of mineral flow through rice plants and on the source tissues responsible for mineral export to developing seeds. Understanding these phenomena in a model plant could help in the development of nutritionally enhanced crop cultivars. A whole-plant accumulation study, using harvests during reproductive development under different Fe supplies,...
Rice (Oryza sativa L.), unlike other cereals, can grow well in paddy fields and is highly tolerant of excess water stress, from either submergence (in which part or all of the plant is under water) or waterlogging (in which excess water in soil limits gas diffusion). Rice handles submergence stress by internal aeration and growth controls. A quiescence strategy based on Submergence-1A (SUB1A) or an...
While plant growth and reproduction is dependent on sunlight, UV irradiation from sunlight is one of the major genotoxic stresses that threaten plant survival and genome stability. In addition, many environmental chemicals can also damage the plant genome. In yeast and mammalian cells protection against the above genome instability is provided by an error-free DNA-damage tolerance (DDT) pathway, which...
Plant hormone gibberellin (GA) promotes juvenile-adult phase change in higher plants. To confirm the functions of GA in rice, I used dwarf mutant d18-dy. d18-dy is a loss-of-function allele of D18, which encodes GA3ox2. d18-dy mutant exhibited long juvenile phase in morphological traits such as the size of the shoot apical meristem (SAM), shape of leaf blades, presence or absence of midribs and node–internode...
Background Drought is the most severe abiotic stress reducing rice yield in rainfed drought prone ecosystems. Variation in intensity and severity of drought from season to season and place to place requires cultivation of rice varieties with different level of drought tolerance in different areas. Multi environment evaluation of breeding lines helps breeder to identify appropriate genotypes...
Background Most of the rice varieties are pubescent. However, the presence of trichomes is an undesirable characteristic in rice production because trichomes can cause atmospheric pollution. The use of glabrous rice varieties represents a solution to this problem. Yunnan Nuda Rice, a glabrous cultivar that constitutes approximately 20% of rice germplasms in Yunnan can provide important recourse for...
Background The deficiency of human acid beta-glucosidase (hGCase) causes Gaucher disease, a rare genetically-inherited disorder currently treated by enzyme replacement therapy using recombinant CHO-derived GCase. In an attempt to provide an alternative and more efficient production system, a chimeric cDNA coding for hGCase operatively linked to the signal peptide of rice glutelin 4 (GluB4) was put...
Cadmium (Cd) is a toxic heavy metal which harms human health. In Japan, a major source of human Cd-intake is rice grains and contamination of paddy soils by Cd and accumulation of Cd in rice grains are the serious agricultural issues. There also exist Cd contamination of rice and its toxicity in several populations in countries including China and Thailand. Understanding the Cd transport mechanisms...
Background Utilization of broad-spectrum resistance (R) genes is an effective and economical strategy to control the fungal pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae, the causal agent of the rice blast disease. Among the cloned blast resistance genes, Pi9, Pi2 and Piz-t confer broad-spectrum resistance to diverse M. oryzae isolates and were isolated from the Pi2/9 locus on chromosome 6. Identification and isolation...
Background Early vigour (biomass accumulation) is a useful but complex trait in rainfed rice (Oryza sativa L). Little is known on trade-offs with drought tolerance. This study explored the relevance of (sugar) metabolic and morphogenetic traits to describe the genetic diversity of rice early vigour and its phenotypic plasticity under drought conditions. A greenhouse experiment was conducted to characterize...
Background Actin depolymerizing factors (ADFs) are small actin-binding proteins. Many higher-plant ADFs has been known to involve in plant growth, development and pathogen defense. However, in rice the temporal and spatial expression of OsADF gene family and their relationship with abiotic stresses tolerance is still unknown. Results Here we reported the first comprehensive gene expression profile...
Background Localized introduction and transient expression of T-DNA constructs mediated by agro-infiltration of leaf tissues has been largely used in dicot plants for analyzing the transitivity and the cell-to cell movement of the RNAi signal. In cereals, however, the morphology of the leaf and particularly the structure of the leaf epidermis, prevent infiltration of a bacterial suspension in cells...
Background Microarray technologies facilitate high-throughput gene expression analysis. However, the diversity of platforms for rice gene expression analysis hinders efficient analysis. Tools to broadly integrate microarray data from different platforms are needed. Results In this study, we developed the Rice Oligonucleotide Array Database (ROAD, http://www.ricearray.org ) to explore gene expression...
Mesocotyl elongation is an important trait for seedling emergence in direct-seeding cultivation in rice. In this study, a backcross inbred line (BIL) population from a cross between Kasalath and Nipponbare was employed to map quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for mesocotyl elongation. A total of 5 QTLs for mesocotyl length were identified on chromosomes 1, 3, 7, 9, and 12 in 2 independent experiments...
It is internationally accepted that malnutrition and chronic diseases in developing countries are key limitations to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. In many developing countries, rice is the primary source of nutrition. In those countries, the major forms of malnutrition are Fe-induced anaemia, Zn deficiency and Vitamin A deficiency, whereas the major chronic disease challenges are Type...
In recent decades, numerous studies have attempted to project the impact of hypothesised anthropogenic climate change on rice production. In this study, we offer a comprehensive review of our current understanding related to temperature, CO2, and water-demand parameters in rice growth models. As to future rice yield, night time temperature should be focused in the models as well as day time temperature...
Background Incidences of weedy rice continuously occurred in paddy fields because its shattering seeds were able to over-winter. In this research, the seed deterioration of weedy rice was investigated compared with cultivated rice, and the wintering characteristics of these two types of rice were investigated with the field wintering test, freezing resistance test, and accelerated aging test. Results...
Background The high-quality sequence information and rich bioinformatics tools available for rice have contributed to remarkable advances in functional genomics. To facilitate the application of gene function information to the study of natural variation in rice, we comprehensively searched for articles related to rice functional genomics and extracted information on functionally characterized genes...
Background Glabrousness is an important agricultural trait for the practical breeding of rice. In this study, depilous (dep), the gene responsible for glabrous leaves and glumes of rice was identified by map-based cloning. Results The dep gene encodes a WUSCHEL-related homeobox 3B that was fine-mapped to a 22-kb region on the short arm of chromosome 5 using progenies derived from crosses between...
Zinc (Zn) is an essential micronutrient for living organisms, and understanding the molecular mechanisms of Zn deficiency may help to develop strategies to mitigate this problem. Microarray analysis of Zn deficient rice revealed the up-regulation of several genes involved in Zn transport. Moreover many genes involved in starch synthesis/transport were up-regulated by Zn deficiency in rice roots and...