Letters to Nature
Nature 420, 312-316 (21 November 2002) | doi:10.1038/nature01184; Received 4 April 2002; Accepted 19 September 2002
The genome sequence and structure of rice chromosome 1
Takuji Sasaki1, Takashi Matsumoto1, Kimiko Yamamoto1, Katsumi Sakata1, Tomoya Baba1, Yuichi Katayose1, Jianzhong Wu1, Yoshihito Niimura2, Zhukuan Cheng3, Yoshiaki Nagamura1, Baltazar A. Antonio1, Hiroyuki Kanamori1, Satomi Hosokawa1, Masatoshi Masukawa1, Koji Arikawa1, Yoshino Chiden1, Mika Hayashi1, Masako Okamoto1, Tsuyu Ando1, Hiroyoshi Aoki1, Kohei Arita1, Masao Hamada1, Chizuko Harada1, Saori Hijishita1, Mikiko Honda1, Yoko Ichikawa1, Atsuko Idonuma1, Masumi Iijima1, Michiko Ikeda1, Maiko Ikeno1, Sachie Ito1, Tomoko Ito1, Yuichi Ito1, Yukiyo Ito1, Aki Iwabuchi1, Kozue Kamiya1, Wataru Karasawa1, Satoshi Katagiri1, Ari Kikuta1, Noriko Kobayashi1, Izumi Kono1, Kayo Machita1, Tomoko Maehara1, Hiroshi Mizuno1, Tatsumi Mizubayashi1, Yoshiyuki Mukai1, Hideki Nagasaki1, Marina Nakashima1, Yuko Nakama1, Yumi Nakamichi1, Mari Nakamura1, Nobukazu Namiki1, Manami Negishi1, Isamu Ohta1, Nozomi Ono1, Shoko Saji1, Kumiko Sakai1, Michie Shibata1, Takanori Shimokawa1, Ayahiko Shomura1, Jianyu Song1, Yuka Takazaki1, Kimihiro Terasawa1, Kumiko Tsuji1, Kazunori Waki1, Harumi Yamagata1, Hiroko Yamane1, Shoji Yoshiki1, Rie Yoshihara1, Kazuko Yukawa1, Huisun Zhong1, Hisakazu Iwama2, Toshinori Endo4, Hidetaka Ito4, Jang Ho Hahn5, Ho-Il Kim5, Moo-Young Eun5, Masahiro Yano1, Jiming Jiang3 and Takashi Gojobori2
- Rice Genome Research Program, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, and Institute of the Society for Techno-innovation of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 1-2, Kannondai 2-chome, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8602, Japan
- Center for Information Biology and DNA Data Bank of Japan, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima 411-8540, Japan
- Department of Horticulture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
- Department of Bioinformatics, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8510, Japan
- Rice Genome Sequencing Project, National Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology, RDA, 249 Seodun-dong, Suwon 441-707, Korea
Correspondence to: Takuji Sasaki1 Correspondence should be addressed to T. Sasaki (e-mail: Email: tsasaki@nias.affrc.go.jp).
The rice species Oryza sativa is considered to be a model plant because of its small genome size, extensive genetic map, relative ease of transformation and synteny with other cereal crops1, 2, 3, 4. Here we report the essentially complete sequence of chromosome 1, the longest chromosome in the rice genome. We summarize characteristics of the chromosome structure and the biological insight gained from the sequence. The analysis of 43.3 megabases (Mb) of non-overlapping sequence reveals 6,756 protein coding genes, of which 3,161 show homology to proteins of Arabidopsis thaliana, another model plant. About 30% (2,073) of the genes have been functionally categorized. Rice chromosome 1 is (G + C)-rich, especially in its coding regions, and is characterized by several gene families that are dispersed or arranged in tandem repeats. Comparison with a draft sequence5 indicates the importance of a high-quality finished sequence.