Monday 13 April 2009

Rice watch: some recent genetics

Some recent articles on rice genetics that bear closer reading, vis-a-vis the evolution of the domestication syndrome and diversification as rice spread in prehistory.

Hagiwara et al (2009) in Molecular Ecology, report on "Diversification in Flowering-time genes in wild and cultivated rice".

Takahashi et al (2009) in PNAS, also report on Flowering time genes in rice

Izawa et al. (2009) "What DNA Changes tell us about rice domestication", the latest of many reviews on the genetics of rice domestication in recent years. Published in Current Opinion in Plant Biology. It continues to promote the hypothesis of stealth origins of rice somwhere in uncivilizaed Island Southeast Asia. (more comments on this some other time, but see the Fuller & Sato letter to Nature Genetics last November).

A new 'yield enhancing gene' dep1 has been reported in Nature Genetics. Here is a short report from the China Daily newspaper.

Grillo et al (2009) have published a discussion of the "Genetic Architecture... of Oryza nivara" representing the latest output of Tao Sang's lab in Michegan, generally a source of useful insights. The bibliography includes no references in archaeobotany.

A Hokkaido research group (Ariyaratne et al) have reported another gene ( rcn 4) involved in control of axillary branching in rice architecture in Plant Science issue for June 2009.

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