YIA: Genomic Analysis of Rice, Sorghum, and Maize

YIA Project Summary

The structure and gene organization of cereal genomes are key to understanding evolutionary relationships among agronomically important cereal crops. However, due to the complexity and size of these genomes, a full genomic sequence may not be available in the near future. In this project, we propose to create comparative maps using existing data in order to understand the relationship and organization of genes in rice chromosome 1 with maize and sorghum. We plan to accomplish this by doing the following:

1. Study gene colinearity and movement of orthologous segments between rice chromosome 1 and maize and sorghum genomes.
2. Build a map of orthologous gene segments between rice, maize, and sorghum genomes using public data sources.
3. Select candidate rice genes to use as anchor points to fill in comparative maps with sorghum and maize.
4. Develop a high-resolution comparative map of rice chromsome 1 with corresponding regions on maize and sorghum.
5. Release data publically through Gramene and peer reviewed journals