Transfers of organelle DNA to the nucleus established several thousand functional genes in eukaryotic chromosomes over evolutionary time. Recent transfers have also contributed nonfunctional plastid (pt)- and mitochondrion (mt)-derived DNA (termed nupts and numts, respectively) to plant nuclear genomes. The two largest transferred organelle genome copies are 131-kb nuptDNA in rice (Oryza sativa...

Heat shock of living tissue induces the synthesis of a unique group of proteins, the heat shock proteins. In plants, the major group of heat shock proteins has a molecular mass of 15 to 25 kilodaltons. Accumulation of these proteins to stainable levels has been reported in only a few species. To examine accumulation of the low molecular weight heat shock proteins in a broader range of species, ...

Evaluation of Tolerance to Drought Stress in Rice Genotypes (Oryza sativa L.) from Central and West Asian Countries

Differential display gels were run for the drought tolerant (N-22) and drought susceptible (Panidhan) genotypes of rice (Oryza sativa) to identify the genes showing differential expression with respect to moisture stress. Differential cDNA products were cloned in PCR-Trap vector and analyzed for differential expression by Northern hybridization. Two clones namely R4A and R7G were found to be as...

Embryos from rice (Oryza sativa L. var. Bluebonnet) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) contain an aminoacyl-tRNA protein transferase which transfers arginine from arginyl-tRNA to the N terminus of a protein acceptor. The activity was measured in vitro in a reaction mixture containing embryo supernatant fraction, buffer, sulfhydryl reagent, and arginyl-tRNA. It was not dependent on the usual cofac...

Cold temperature is an important abiotic stress which negatively affects morphological development and seed production in rice (Oryza sativa L.). At the seedling stage, cold stress causes poor germination, seedling injury and poor stand establishment; and at the reproductive stage cold decreases seed yield. The Rice Diversity Panel 1 (RDP1) is a global collection of over 400 O. sativa accession...

Reproductive barriers perform a vital role during speciation. Hybrid weakness, the poorer development of hybrids compared with their parents, hinders gene exchange between different species at the postzygotic stage. Here we show that two incompatible dominant loci (Hwi1 and Hwi2) involving three genes are likely to determine the high temperature-dependent expression of hybrid weakness in inters...

Rice blast caused by Magnaporthe oryzae is one of the most devastating rice diseases worldwide. To understand the genetic diversity of indica landrace accessions and identify simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers that are associated with blast resistance, a population of 276 indica landraces from across the world was constructed. This population was then used to evaluate the blast-resistance phe...

High density molecular linkage map is a prerequisite to identify the quantitative traits loci. Construction of linkage maps, using mapping populations derived from two major subspecies: indica and japonica in rice, have been reported. However, limited work was conducted in indica subspecies. Present studies focused to construct a molecular map based on indica × indica (Shaheen Basmati × Pokkali...

Rice is an important staple crop throughout the world, but environmental stress like low-light conditions can negatively impact crop yield and quality. Using pot experiments and field experiments, we studied the effects of shading on starch pasting viscosity and starch content with six rice varieties for three years, using the Rapid Visco Analyser to measure starch pasting viscosity. Shading at...