Model plants: rice
Because Arabidopsis is only distantly related to the cereals, the next plant species to be sequenced was rice. The data emerging are extensive, and some of the most interesting discoveries include:
| Although 81% of predicted Arabidopsis genes have a rice ortholog, only 49% of predicted rice genes have an Arabidopsis ortholog.
Although gene order is hardly conserved between Arabidopsis and rice, many gene functions are conserved (light receptors, flowering pathways, stress responses, developmental pathways, etc.) There are nearly 50,000 genes in the rice genome, more than in the human genome.
(Goff et al., 2002, Rensink & Buell, 2004, Yu et al., 2002) |
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