Toward cataloguing all rice genes: large-scale sequencing of randomly chosen rice cDNAs from a callus cDNA library.

A large-scale sequence analysis of rice cDNA was performed for a library from rice callus cultured in a medium containing 1 p.p.m. of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid. Random sequencing of 2778 cDNA clones generated 2259 non-redundant expressed sequence tags (ESTs). The strategy of sequencing cDNAs can yield quickly a large number of novel genes. After translation, 690 sequences showed a significant amino acid sequence similarity to sequences already known from PIR. The source of known proteins ranged from bacteria to human. In this report, the non-redundant set of 280 identified ESTs is analyzed in detail.