Publication: Xinhua
Date: Friday, October 12, 2001

BEIJING -- China`s leading gene scientist Chen Zhu announced Friday that Chinese researchers have completed the sequencing of the hybrid rice genome, whose full database will be published to be used free by the world`s scientists.

Chen, also vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said that the working draft covers over 90 percent of the total DNA sequences of the ``super hybrid rice``, which was invented by well-known agriculturist Yuan Longping.

The latest scientific achievements made by the CAS genome research center, as well as the Beijing Huada Gene Research Center and its southern base in Hangzhou, in east China`s Zhejiang Province, show that China, following the United States, is able to complete large-scale genome sequencing and related analysis on its own.

The rice genome has about 430 million base pairs, one seventh of that of the human genome. The genome sequencing and its analysis will help people understand the genetic mechanism of rice, which could be employed to improve quality of the crop.

Yang Huanming, a CAS researcher who led the sequencing project, said that the unraveling of the rice genome will be conducive to studying other crops such as wheat and corn.

The database, set up following the completion of the rice genome sequencing, covers all the 12 chromosomes and more than 95 percent of the rice genome. The accuracy of the sequencing on 90 percent of areas reached over 99 percent, Yang said.

Meanwhile, the Chinese researchers also created a unique mathematics method, which greatly avoided the difficulties faced in the human genome sequencing, for analyzing the huge sequencing results, the gene specialist said.

The software used by the researchers could be successively run in both state-of-the-art SUN workstations and China-made Dawn 3000 supercomputers.

The working draft and database of the rice genome are the first stage of China`s ambitious research and development endeavor on the hybrid rice genome, which was launched in May 2000. The complete genome map of hybrid rice is expected to be finished by the end of next year.

The researchers hope to zero in on functional genes in rice which decide maturity, high yielding, as well as anti-disease and anti-insect characteristics.