Sequencing Of The Australian Wild Relative Of Rice O. meridionalis

Oryza genus is composed of 18 species that include the two cultivated forms O. sativa (the Asian rice) and O. glaberrima (the african rice). Oryza species are found worldwide while two are endemic to Australia, i.e. O. meridionalis and O. australiensis. O. meridionalis belongs to the A-genome species of the genus. It thus belongs to the closely related species of both african and asian species. IOMAP is an international consortium aiming at developing genomic ressources for the entire Oryza genus. Several partners of this consortium are now in the process of completing the genome sequencing of all A-genome species. We present the current status of the O. meridionalis sequencing project which is part of iOMAP. Our de novo assembly is based on a combination of several insert-size illumina paired-end libraries. Moreover, scaffods are anchored on the physical map developped within the OMAP project. We also annotated the genes and the Transposable Elements of this genome and discuss our results in the global view of all A-genome species genome sequences.