Michelle Adkisson BIO345, TTh 9:00am-10:15am Dr. Pigg, Dr. Escalante 31 January 2012 Homework 2.

Question 1 Oryza Sativa, also known as rice, has always been of utmost importance because people all over the world eat it, and in some countries, like Korea, it is eaten with every meal, every day of the year. Just 10 years ago, two genomes were sequenced, that of japonica and indica. Sequencing the genomes of rice strains is momentous because scientists can now more efficiently engineer subspecies to yield the best crop and also because it sheds light onto other related crops (two examples are wheat and maize which happen to also be of acute importance to the economy). This results in an appreciable difference in the ease with which plant breeding of rice occurs. Scientists can now design for and produce strains of rice, which was heretofore not possible. Of the grass family, rice is known to have the smallest genome, but by sequencing it, scientists can find portions of its genome that are shared between other members of the grass family. The application of this is without bounds. Not only is rice small compared to other members of the grass family, but Indicas genes that are 4,500 base-pairs-long, pale in comparison to humans which are 16x that. Since 1998, there have been 4 significant rice genome projects and while they were once all working independently, efforts are now being made to combine research and sprint towards the finish line, which is a fully complete genome sequence. Again, scientists have unbridled excited towards this project because it has massive amounts of real-life applications.

Word Count: 253