Rice Genome Project.... Done!

AtomicBomb writes "First, it was human; now, it is rice. The gene code for the first important crop will soon be (sort of) available. BBC provides us a few more articles. Hopefully, the genetic informatuion can speed up the breeding of tougher and higher-yielding varieties that will benefit the world's burgeoning population..."

Comments

cool

[Niksie3]

does this mean that my rice won't need additional flavoring? I want rice with without actually having to put the sauce on it!

Re:cool

[linzeal]

Hmmmz, actually if they could somehow flavor it so americans would eat more of it that would not be such a bad thing. I say flavor it like cow.

Anyone thinking what I am?

[Anonymous Coward]

New baby formula for clones :)

Cloned rice milk.

now for patented rice

[squidinkcalligraphy]

can't wait for corporations to start patenting and modifying parts of the gene so they can start suing farmers for growing _their_ rice. GM Canola is a good case study for this sort of thing - pollen from GM crops was carried by the wind into adjacent farms, then the biotech companies sued the farmers on whose farms it landed on to 'licsense' the crop. It is now thought impossible to grow organic canola in Canada because of contamination from GM canola.

Re:now for patented rice

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, considering that "canola" oil is toxic anyway (sure, the modern strains have LESS of the toxin) and tastes like shit, no big loss.

Re:now for patented rice

[slinted]

inside all this, i think we get too caught up on the goals....sometimes a rose is just a rose
for all those who think of this as a step forward for the jugernaut of genetic manipulation....
the "real" problem although the backers might disagree is that we don't understand how plants *work*! Both of the research groups themselves tout the benifits this will have for food growth, but think of the benefits this will have to farming not through genetic engineering, but through understanding rices natural growth cycle. The tremendous efficiency increases we've previously seen in growth rates of grain crops has as much come from treating the plants more naturally, but people focus on the association with morally shady or profit driven engineering using this information.

Hardly "done"

[bzcpcfj]

The scientists who worked on this project were interviewed on NPR yesterday. While they have accomplished a great deal, they are far from "done". According to one of the researchers, 10% of the work is complete and the balance may not be finished in the foreseeable future.

On the positive side, he was quick to point out an "engineering rule" (as he called it) that says that 90% of the benefit comes from the first 10% of the work. While this is an intriguing restatement of the old 80/20 or "gold in the mine" postulates, it doesn't ordinarily apply directly to new discoveries.

I suspect, though, that due to the nature of genetic research, there will be some quick benefits. As another researcher pointed out, with the information they have ( and the knowledge they'll be gaining ), the time to develop a new strain will be reduced because rather than having to wait for the entire growth cycle to take place, the DNA of seeds can be analyzed to see if the desired property is present.

Another interesting aspect was that emphasis was placed on conventional breeding techniques, not genetic engineering. In other words, if you know what property is controlled by what gene, you can more efficiently cross-breed for it. I presume that this emphasis is given to allay fears (whether real or imagined) of "Frankenplants" mutating away out there in some lab.

One fascinating fact they revealed is that rice (and other plants) have more genes than humans. Apparently, this is because the rice genes are simpler so it takes more of them to provide the "instruction set" for being a rice plant.

I dunno...sounds like the Triffids are among us...

Marketing drivel

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think the press release is anything but marketing drivel - wait a bit. The drugs will wear off. The Syngenta material is vaporware. Nobody outside of Syngenta has seen the sequence. The only people permitted to see and, most importantly, examine the sequence must pay $$$$. Not exactly likely to have some start-up corp. stand up and publicly announce that they had been snookered by Syngenta. Presume that the sequence does not exist.
The Chinese sequence is publicly available - at NCBI. Unfortunately this material is merely a collection of clustered sequencing machine runs. None of the clusters have been demonstrated to be related to Oryza sativa ssp. indica nuclear chromosomes. Just having sequence similarity to the other members of the cluster. Demonstrating this detail detracts from the goal of the project - regain public prominence for Chinese biological science research. Not create data which can be readily evaluated relative to other related data. Read their posting. You will have to click to the English material {noted at the top of the page} and follow the URL path to the rice genome material. A direct URL does not work stand alone. Read the last page, describing the accomplishment. A lot of people needed PT to ease aching elbows after self back-patting.
Vaporware promoted with free advertising via the 'news' media is not unique to the software industry.

Re:Marketing drivel

[Anonymous Coward]

Really wish I had mod points to give right now - this is one of those interesting little points that nobody is going to 'fess to to writing on a public board, but which needs to be out there anyway.

Somebody mod this up, please!

(And damn straight I'm gonna post this anonymously too)

Tough? Deliciously chewy in my book

[fehlschlag]

"Rice-a-clony"tm: the new San Francisco treat...

Founded by Uncle Ben

[george399]

Rice Genome Project.... Done!

Next project, Minute Rice Genome Project.... Done in 5 minutes!

More Rice = Higher Population

[pertinax18]

benefit the world's burgeoning population

Actually it will continue the vicious cycle of overpopulation that we are currently in. The more food we have, the more babies we have and the faster the population grows. It is a simple fact that healthy well fed people (especially in 3rd world nations) are going to have more kids than people who have just enough food to feed only a small family. We are probably better off trying to decrease food production instead of increase it.

Re:More Rice = Higher Population

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what? How do you explain Japan's situation, which is unarguably a first world country with plenty of food to eat -- yet is facing an aging of its population and more and more people choosing to go childless?

Re:More Rice = Higher Population

[mcg1969]

Say what? How do you explain Japan's situation, which is unarguably a first world country with plenty of food to eat -- yet is facing an aging of its population and more and more people choosing to go childless?

Rather simply, actually: Japan has two things that developing/hurting countries don't: food and women's rights.

The advancement of women's education, rights, and the availability of birth control reduces the birth rate. (Basically, once women realize that they don't have to have kids, or at least have as many, they often don't.)

Developing countries lack the food to support more children, but also the social advancement needed to control childbirth. And I think it's obvious that the social improvements necessarily come after the food. "I tell you what, I'll give you this rice if you learn how to read."

Human, Rice.... ?

[suss]

First, it was human; now, it is rice

And the logical conclusion would be... Rice boys?
Are they actually merged with their honda civic?

rice grains... with a grain of salt

[meridoc]

Okay, while it's neat to see that the whole genome thing didn't die after the human genome was sequenced, there's still a lot of work to be done.

Once a genome is sequenced, researchers still need to figure out exactly what each gene does. The second part is much harder as genes don't necessarily produce qualities by themselves (i.e., some cancer "genes" are actually two or three genes that work together).

Besides, although we could conceivably control various properties of grains through gene manipulation, we still won't know until it's actually grown if the stuff tastes good (or if it tastes really good to particular insects and other beasties).

Hunger spin doesn't pan out

[andaru]

They are trying to make themselves look like humanitarians by working on rice and claiming that their research will help the starving people of the world; that the abillity to tailor rice to produce more will provide the surplus of food that is missing in the equation of world hunger.

There are all sorts of things wrong with this.

1. The human race produces more food than is required to feed the entire population of the world. This has been true for at least a decade, I believe.

2. The reasons that surplus food does not make it to the hungry of the world are almost always political (and often exacerbated by the physical difficulties of distribution). It is not that there is not enough food, it is that it is difficult to give it away without it being stolen by the local powers. In many cases, the donors of the food (I'm looking at you, U.S. gov't) know in advance that the people who are receiving it will sell it to buy weapons; donated food is often used to covertly fund arms deals.

3. Often, the original causes of hunger are political deals which trade the agricultural land of native citizens (without compensation or consent) to U.S. agricultural corporations, who remove the native population from 'their' new farmland and often destroy it in the process of farming it irresponsibly.

4. Eating a sufficient quantity of food does not mean that you are getting the necessary nutrition to survive. You cannot establish good health in an impoverished area just by providing enough rice.

5. History hath shown that when companies genetically engineer foods, they do it, not for the purposes of increasing the nutritional value, or flavor, or anything else of real interest to the ultimate consumer. They engineer things like square tomatoes to save on shipping costs. They engineer herbicide immunities, not so that farmers can grow more food by growing fewer weeds, but so that they can sell their patented herbicide. The ultimate effect of this is to damage our agricultural resources for the profit of a few large corporations.

6. Even if we could 'safely' increase yield with genetically engineered rice, the likelihood is that this would just lead to faster consumption of our agricultural land (since we farm it irresponsibly) and exacerbate our water crisis (meanwhile, Monsanto is trying to buy up all of the world's water supply they can).

7. Given the cavalier attitude of corporations releasing under-tested genetic modifications into the wild, I would not give them good odds of getting the benefits of genetic modifications to outweigh the harms. I would never release a piece of software with the cavalier attitude that these companies release biological command sets. They have proven that they have under-tested by making "scientific" claims about the engineered foods that have turned out too be patently untrue (won't pose human allergy risks, won't contaminate non-GM crops, etc.). It seems that software developers are able to be carefull enough to deliver mission critical applications that actually work as advertised; these genetic systems are the ultimate in mission critical (the mission being the survival of an ecosystem which supports us) and it seems that they are using much less caution in dealing with them than you would if you were writing a piece of software to control someone's life-support equipment.

Anyway, the point is, when you read an article that says that some large corporation's forray into the land of profit is somehow going to bring widespread benefit to humanity, you can bet it is a load of crap. Any action which brings widespread benefit to humanity tends to be counter to their abillity to control their profits.

As an example, if a giant fast food franchise chain were going to automate all of their drive-up windows, you might see an article with a headline like, "Automated drive-ups free workers from meaningless, horrible drudgery." What do you think happens to the workers? Does the company, in its bid to benefit humankind, keep paying them so that they can go and create something usefull for the rest of the world? No, the workers get laid off and go on unemployment or welfare, the company makes more money, and the landlord has a hard time getting the rent. This example looks like a benefit to everyone at first, but when you look closer, it is the corporation making money at everybody else's expense.

Re:Hunger spin doesn't pan out

[AtomicBomb]

2. The reasons that surplus food does not make it to the hungry of the world are almost always political (and often exacerbated by the physical difficulties of distribution).
Exactly due to this reason, scientists need to work on this area. Poor farmer needs to produce something from *their* small and bad (may be infertile or dry) piece of farm land. They want to and need to stand on their own feet. That's how better rice strains come to a help. That was a largely unseen green revolution in developing world during the 60-70's. Using hybrid technique, the yield was increased by around 20 %. But, we need something even better. (BTW, the indica rice being sequenced is actually one of the best rice strain developed by a famous rice expert Rongping Yuan in China back in the 70's. The strain has been widely cultivated in Southern China and part of SE Asian since then)

6. Even if we could 'safely' increase yield with genetically engineered rice, the likelihood is that this would just lead to faster consumption
What if we can do that without GM the rice?
From one of the deeper BBC link: beta-carotene pathway is already in rice .... One could make a non-GM vitamin-A rice simply by studying those genes. Without the code, the hybrid exercises are just a little bit better than random guessing.

The crucial point is to avoid the project being hijacked by some evil multinational companies. Put that under some kind of UN development program will benefit everyone.

Self-feeding rice

[BerserkDog]

Um, Mr. Scientist Guy?... could you put some leg genes in my rice so it can just run right up and jump into my mouth? Yummy!

Same distribution and stabillity problem

[andaru]

On the first point (#2), there exist all of the same political problems with distributing the GM rice seed for the farmers to grow. Also, in order to farm a piece of land, you need some stability in the area. You can't just pack up your farm and move it everytime the soldiers come through. In addition to this, the companies doing the research have no economic interest in freely distributing their product to third world countries.

On the second point (#6), the same thing applies to non-GM food. The issue is overproduction. When humans turned to agriculture from a nomadic life, they enabled population explosion (and started the degradation of resources) by allowing themselves to get nutrition out of the soil faster than they put it back in. Now the rain barrel is almost empty, and getting filled more and more slowly, as we draw from it faster and faster.

On the third point, it started out already in the wrong hands, as evidenced by the fact that they will only release their data under unspecified licencing arrangements. The evil multinational companies created it, so they don't need to hijack it.