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Zhigang Wu, Dongming Fang, Rui Yang, et al. present the genome assembly of a wild rice species Oryza granulata, revealing critical insights about the rapid genome expansion and evolution observed in the Oryza genus. They find that recent bursts of LTR retrotransposons have led to the rapid increase in O. granulate genome size following speciation.
Copper (Cu) is an essential mineral nutrient but high concentrations in rice grain can cause toxicity. Here the authors provide evidence that natural variation in rice grain Cu concentration is caused by altered sequestration of Cu into root vacuoles due to a single amino acid substitution in the OsHMA4 transporter.
Xiangdong Fu and colleagues map variants in OsSPL16 that influence grain width and yield in a cross between a slender-grain Basmati and a wide-grain indica variety of rice. The authors show that higher expression of OsSPL16 promotes cell division and grain filling and can lead to improvements in grain quality and yield.
Bin Han and colleagues performed low-coverage sequencing of 517 rice landraces and constructed a high-density haplotype map of the rice genome. They have used this resource to carry out genome-wide association studies for 14 agronomic traits and identify 80 loci with strong association signals.
Two studies in Science show that cytosine base editors, but not adenine base editors or CRISPR–Cas9, induce notable off-target single-nucleotide variants in rice and in mouse embryos.
