Rice Genome Project

 Joint project of
o National Institute of Aerobiological Sciences (NIAS).
o Society for Techno-innovation of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (STAFF).
o Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF).
 Gene – Blueprint of Life.
 Rice – smallest genome (430 Mbps).
 Genomics – Study of genetic content of an organism.
o Genome of plants and animals have information about genes and therefore
information about transcribed DNA.
 Features:
o World’s first genome to be completely sequenced.
o Experiment plant – Arabidopsis thaliana.
 Rice is the experiment plant because:
o It belongs to grass family.
o Smaller genome + High Diversity.
o Co-linearity with wheat, barley, and maize.
 Applications of RGP
o Helps in artificial development of large varieties of rice mutants.
o Helps in enhancing molecular products.
o Rice genomics – international open access committed to serve rice genome research.
Human Genome Project

Methodologies

 Involved two major approaches:

o Identification of all the genes expressed as RNA – Expressed Sequence Tags (EST)
o Sequencing the entire genome (blind approach), with all the coding and non-coding
sequences and then assigning different regions in the sequence with different
functions (Sequence annotation).
 For sequencing, all the DNA is isolated from a cell and then cut into random fragments of
smaller sizes, then cloned in a suitable host using specialised vector.
o Vectors – BAC (Bacterial Artificial Chromosome) and YAC (Yeast Artificial
Chromosome)
o YAC, BAC – Artificially constructed vectors, into which the DNA fragment to be
sequenced can be ligated.
 Sequencing was done using automated DNA sequencers that worked on the principle of a
method invented by Frederick Sanger (also determined sequence of amino acids in proteins)
 Then they were arranged using some overlapping regions present in them.
 Initially, they had no overlapping ends, therefore, they had to generate overlapping ends.
 They did this using computer technology
 Then they annotated these sequences (marked / labelled) and assigned them to each
chromosome.
 Chromosome 1 was completed in May 2006 (Last of 24 human chromosomes).
 Another difficulty faced was assigning the genetic and physical maps on the genome.
 They did this by using information on polymorphism of restriction endonuclease
recognition sites and some repetitive sequences of DNA, called microsatellites.