Rice sequence sparks controversy

Rice's genome has been sequenced and is the first complete cereal plant sequence to be publicly released.

This major accomplishment in plant genomics was announced in the April 5 edition of Science amid renewed controversy about public versus private sequencing projects.

Two teams, one lead by Steven Goff at Syngenta and the other by Jun Yu of the Beijing Genomics Institute and the University of Washington Genome Centre, sequenced different strains of rice, known as the japonica and the indica strains.

"It is just terrific," said Dr Liz Dennis, leader of the Genomics and Plant Development program at CSIRO Plant Industry.

Dennis said that wheat, oats, barley and other grains had the same genes in similar positions to rice.

"Rice is a model for all the cereals."

The controversy has arisen over Science's decision to publish Syngenta's sequence despite the fact that access to the data has been restricted.

Several leading scientists, including British Nobel laureates Sir Paul Nurse and Sir Aaron Klug, have written to Science in protest over the issue. Last year Science was criticised for publishing Celera's human genome sequence when it wasn't publicly available.

Syngenta has said that it will allow academic researchers unhindered access to the sequence, but commercial users will have to pay.

Dennis said that although CSIRO was a public sector research organisation, it had a lot of commercial collaborations. "I don't know where CSIRO falls in the scheme of things."

In contrast, the sequence generated by the Beijing Genomics Institute and the University of Washington has been deposited into GenBank for public access.

Earlier sequencing efforts by Monsanto have not been published. And another public consortium, the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project, is expected to have a high quality draft sequence available at the end of the year.

Dennis said "The sequences appear to be quite similar," so it might not matter if Syngenta and Monsanto restrict access to their sequences.

"Clearly we now need to know what the genes are doing."

CSIRO's project, known as the Rice Gene Machine, to examine the functions of the genes involves "knocking them out one at a time," Dennis said.

The project, sponsored by the NSW government, is part of the NSW Centre for Agricultural Genomics and involves NSW Agriculture, CSIRO Plant Industry, CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, and Macquarie University's Australian Proteomics Analysis Facility.