John Innes
Centre

Rice Genome Sequencing To Speed Up As A Result Of Sharing Public And Private Data

The publicly funded International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP) has announced today that it has reached an agreement that will give the IRGSP access to information and other resources, from the biotechnology company Monsanto, that will both accelerate and reduce the cost of its own programme.

The IRGSP is a partnership of laboratories in Japan, China, USA, EU, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand that was established to DNA sequence the genome* of rice and make the information available for public use. This is an enormous task. The rice genome contains 430 million base-pairs of DNA, making this project second only to the human genome project in current genome projects.**. The IRGSP has been working for about one year and was predicted to complete decoding of the rice genome in approximately 8 years. Monsanto’s announcement, that they will provide their “working draft” of the rice genome sequence to the IRGSP, promises to advance the completion date by at least 4-5 years. The agreement obliges IRGSP partners, who are using the Monsanto rice sequence information, to complete the sequence and place it into public databases as quickly as possible, in accordance with their existing strategy.

“Genome sequencing is complex, time consuming and expensive; for example, it is estimated that the IRGSP will cost public funds 200 million US dollars”, said Professor Michael Bevan, a member of the IRGSP based at the John Innes Centre, Norwich***. “The sharing of IRGSP and Monsanto data and other resources is a very welcome development as it will speed up the rate of sequencing and significantly reduce the cost of the project, without compromising the policy of public release of sequence information.” Professor Bevan added “the draft sequence provided by Monsanto is like an outline blueprint onto which we can add more and more detail. It gives us the opportunity to complete this large task much more quickly and cost-effectively because we are being given a detailed map of the rice genome as well as nearly half of the sequence. Recently the genome of the fruit fly, Drosophila, was sequenced in record time in a collaborative programme between publicly-funded scientists and a private company. The sharing of data by Monsanto establishes another collaborative model for private-public interactions”.

Rice was selected for complete genome sequencing for several reasons. Firstly, rice is one of the most important crop plants in the world as it is the staple food of nearly half of the world’s population. Globally 560 million tonnes were produced on 150 million hectares in 1998. It is the staple crop for many developing areas of the world; areas which experience some of the greatest rates of population increase and where environmental degradation caused by agriculture is extreme.

Dr Ian Gibson MP, a member of the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee, commented “this is an important scientific milestone. The rapid completion of the rice genome sequence will benefit millions of people throughout the world by the development of rice crops with greater yields and improved nutrition”.

Secondly, there is an excellent and extensive background of scientific resources and knowledge in rice biology, both of which are necessary to effectively tackle the rice genome. Thirdly, rice is widely studied, with extensive research and breeding programmes worldwide. Over 120,000 different landraces, varieties and species are known and these represent a wide range of adapted ecotypes that are sources of natural genetic variation for plant characteristics that are important in breeding programmes.

The staple crops in most parts of the world are cereals, if not rice then maize, wheat, barley, sorghum and millet. In addition to its intrinsic value, rice is a valuable model for studying the genomes of these other cereals, all of which are distant relatives of rice. These cereals have genomes that are many times larger than that of rice****, but they contain about the same number of active genes (approximately 30-35,000). The genes are arranged in “conserved” blocks, so that in different cereals the same genes tend to occur in the same relative position in the genome. Scientists at the John Innes Centre have developed a deep understanding of the relationships between cereal genomes that will be invaluable in using rice genome sequence to understand the large and complex genomes of wheat and barley. In the near future many of the important details of all cereal genomes will be revealed that will accelerate breeding programs and identify genes for disease resistance and environmental adaptation.

Decoding the rice genome will provide

• new information that will assist plant breeders in breeding programmes (including hybridisation of rice with wild species to increase yield and improve disease and pest resistance),
• new targets for genetic modification to improve crop performance and quality and,
• useful links to another genome sequencing project in the model plant (Arabidopsis thaliana).

*****Cereal genomes: Cereals use about 30-35,000 genes to encode all the essential information required for growth and reproduction. Because of their different evolutionary past some cereals actually contain several copies of the entire cereal genome and thus contain multiple copies of the basic set of 30-35,000 genes represented by the rice genome. Genomes also typically contain “extra” DNA which does not encode genetic information and in some genomes this can be a significant proportion of the total DNA present. In wheat and maize the total amount of DNA is 24 times the amount found in rice – even though the plants are using the same basic set of genes. These factors complicate the process of sequencing the genome and of identifying genes, so it is easier to work with small genomes such as rice and use these as a starting point to tackle larger, more complex genomes.

Contact: Professor Michael Bevan (01603 450520)
John Innes Centre
Norwich Research Park
Colney, NORWICH
NR4 7UH, UK
Telephone:01603 450000
FAX:01603 450045
E-mail: sce.mail@bbsrc.ac.uk
Internet: http://www.jic.bbsrc.ac.uk/press/

Background Information:

Monsanto Rice Genome Sequencing Project

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