Rice Genetics IV - IRRI books - International Rice Research Institute

the working group can develop a network to propagate and distribute selective stocks.Gurdev Khush indicated that, because IRRI routinely distributes rice germplasm andhas considerable experience in the safe movement of rice seed, IRRI can exploreextending this service to mutant stocks. However, for transgenic mutants, IRRI mustalso assess its capacity to handle a large quantity of materials.Development of microarray resourcesSeveral research groups reported on the development and applications of microarrayanalysis in rice at the IRGS. Hans Bohnert of the University of Arizona described theprogress made in using microarray to analyze gene expression under abiotic stresses.Shoshi Kikuchi of the National Institute of Agrobiological Resources, Japan, discussedthe microarray project under the Japan Rice Genome Program. Novartis AgricultureDiscovery Institute Inc. announced that a rice gene chip carrying 23,000 uniquegenes would be available for research by January 2001.The group discussed the timeliness and benefits of developing microarray facilitiesthat would be publicly available to the research community. The three main pointswere● Microarray technology is still far from routine and technically demanding. Itmay be too early for an institute like IRRI to invest now unless strong technicalsupport is available.● The technology has multiple applications and significant technical improvementshave been made over the past year. It would be a worthy investment tobroaden access to this technology.●Microarray technology requires an abundant supply of cDNA and expressedsequence tags. Thus, it is important for the research community to collaborateto make this resource available.To address the issues of access, an ad hoc discussion group—Hans Bohnert, AndrzejKilian, Qifa Zhang, Susan McCouch, and Akhilesh Tyagi—was formed to furtheranalyze the costs and benefits of developing a publicly accessible microarray facilityand how to promote sharing of needed resources. Hans Bohnert will continue to leadthe group discussion and report back to the working group with recommendations.This will be particularly useful to IRRI as it is considering investing in a microarrayfacility with the goal of providing research support to many collaborating partners inAsia.Since the International Working Group began, there has been a growing interestand commitment of the public and private research communities toward collaboration.Throughout the IRGS, many research groups expressed interest in participatingin the working group. The three activities have provided the focal points for the workinggroup to concentrate its efforts. Discussions at the IRGS workshop have providedimportant guidance toward sharing genetic stocks and microarray resources.486