Ascribing Functions to Genes: Journey Towards Genetic Improvement of Rice Via Functional Genomics.

Ascribing Functions to Genes: Journey Towards Genetic Improvement of Rice Via Functional Genomics. Curr Genomics. 2016 Jun;17(3):155-76 Authors: Mustafiz A, Kumari S, Karan R Abstract Rice, one of the most important cereal crops for mankind, feeds more than half the world population. Rice has been heralded as a model cereal owing to its small genome size, amenability to easy transformation, high synteny to other cereal crops and availability of complete genome sequence. Moreover, sequence wealth in rice is getting more refined and precise due to resequencing efforts. This humungous resource of sequence data has confronted research fraternity with a herculean challenge as well as an excellent opportunity to functionally validate expressed as well as regulatory portions of the genome. This will not only help us in understanding the genetic basis of plant architecture and physiology but would also steer us towards developing improved cultivars. No single technique can achieve such a mammoth task. Functional genomics through its diverse tools viz. loss and gain of function mutants, multifarious omics strategies like transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and phenomics provide us with the necessary handle. A paradigm shift in technological advances in functional genomics strategies has been instrumental in generating considerable amount of information w.r.t functionality of rice genome. We now have several databases and online resource...
Source: Current Genomics - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Tags: Curr Genomics Source Type: research