Project description:Popular rice mega varieties lack sufficient key micronutrients (e.g., Fe, Zn), vitamins and a balanced amino acid composition that are essential for a healthy diet. The major bottleneck for improving the nutritional quality of popular rice varieties through conventional breeding or gene technology is our lack of an integrated understanding of the biochemical and molecular processes that occur during rice grain filling (and their determining genes or loci). In this project, we will perform molecular expression profiling on specific tissue layers of the rice grain. To perform this experiment, the material will be developing rice seeds from plants grown hydroponically under controlled greenhouse conditions. Then, the laser microdissection approach will be applied to dissect different parts of the grain (i.e, vascular trace, aleurone, nucellar epidermis, etc). Total RNA will be extracted from these dissected parts and RNA sequencing will be performed. In this project, we will learn how the synthesis and deposition of grain nutrients is regulated, particularly, during grain filling.
Project description:In this project we are investigating the mechanism of drought tolerance in rice at early vegetative stage by looking into expression profile of DEGs and uniquely expressed genes
Project description:In this study, we provide a global overview of genome-wide OsHOX24 binding sites in rice under control and desiccation stress conditions in wild-type and OsHOx24 overexpressing rice plants (H49 line) via chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-sequencing) approach. We identified numerous downstream targets of OsHOX24 under desiccation stress and control by analyzing the comprehensive binding site map of OsHOX24 at whole genome level in rice.
Project description:miRNAs can regulate target gene expression by mRNA cleavage. Rice degradome sequencing was employed to validate mRNA targets of rice miRNAs.
Project description:The lack of MIRNA set and genome sequence of O. rufipogon (the ancestor of the cultivated rice) has limited to answer the role of MIRNA genes in rice domestication. In this study, a genome, three small RNA populations and a degradome of O.rufipogon were sequenced by Illumina platform and miRNA expression were investigated by miRNA chips. A de novo genome was assembled using ~55x coverage of raw sequencing data and a total of 387 MIRNAs were identified in the O. rufipogon genome based on ~5.2 million unique small RNA reads from three different tissues of O. rufipogon. Of these O. rufipogon MIRNAs, 259 were not found in the cultivated rice, suggesting loss of these MIRNAs in the cultivated rice. We also found that 48 MIRNAs were novel in the cultivated rice, suggesting that they were potential targets of domestication selection. Some miRNAs showed significant expression difference in the wild and cultivated rice, suggesting that expression of miRNA could also be a target of domestication, as demonstrated for the miR164 family. Our results illustrated MIRNA genes, like protein-coding genes, were significantly shaped during rice domestication and could be one of the driven forces contributed to rice domestication.
Project description:In this study, we sequenced small RNA content from three different rice cultivars employing Illumina technology. More than 15 million reads were generated using Illumina high-throughput sequencing platform. After pre-processing, distinct small RNA sequences were identified for each rice cultivars.