NEW YORK, June 6 - Researchers from the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project published an analysis of the finished rice chromosome 10 sequence in the journal Science today.
The scientists predict a total of about 3,500 genes on chromosome 10, about twice as many as predicted by the draft genome sequence that was published by the IRGSP, a public consortium, at the end of 2002. About two thirds of the predicted proteins have matches in Arabidopsis thaliana, the researchers found. Moreover, the map of chromosome 10 is similar to that of sorghum and maize.
The smallest of the 12 rice chromosomes, at 22 million base pairs, chromosome 10 contains considerable amounts of heterochromatin. The finished sequence still has seven gaps, representing about four percent of the total sequence.
The study was conducted by several US groups, led by Robin Buell at the Institute for Genomic Research, Richard McCombie at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, Joachim Messing at RutgersUniversity, and Rod Wing at the University of Arizona.
Last fall, Japanese and Chinese IRGSP research groups published the complete sequence of rice chromosomes 1 and 4. The IRGSP expects to publish the final rice genome sequence by 2004.