BACKGROUND Transgene flow through pollen and seeds leads to transgenic volunteers and feral populations in the nature, and consumer choice and economic incentives determine whether transgenic crops will be cultivated in the field. Transgenic and non-transgenic plants are likely to coexist in the field and natural habitats, but their competitive interactions are not well understood. METHODS Fi...

A field experiment was conducted to illustrate the different degree and dynamics of microbial community structure and function in the rhizosphere across four growing stages (before plantation and three growth stages) using a combination of biochemical (enzyme assay and microbial biomass carbon) and molecular approaches of qPCR and PCR-DGGE (polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel elec...

Plants use pattern recognition receptors to defend themselves from microbial pathogens. These receptors recognize pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and activate signaling pathways that lead to immunity. In rice (Oryza sativa), the chitin elicitor binding protein (CEBiP) recognizes chitin oligosaccharides released from the cell walls of fungal pathogens. Here, we show that the rice ...

As a well-known animal hormone, melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine) is also involved in multiple plant biological processes, especially in various stress responses. Rice is one of the most important crops, and melatonin is taken in by many people everyday from rice. However, the transcriptional profiling of melatonin-related genes in rice is largely unknown. In this study, the expression p...

Rice is one of the most important crops in the world, and hybrid rice is planted broadly in China which accounts for half of China’s rice acreage. Quantification of rice spatial architecture is useful for breeding high yield cultivars, and studies on morphogenesis and development of rice plant structure have been carried out (Watanabe et al., 2005). Three-dimensional (3D) digitizing has been a ...

Introduction: The brown planthopper (BPH), Nilaparvata lugens (Stål) (Hemiptera: Delphacidae), is a notorious insect pest of rice. Nutrient supplementation can alter plant biochemical compositions which may indirectly affect on ecological fitness parameters of its insect pest. However, few findings are available on nutrient-induced ecological fitness of BPH and relationship of BPH fitness param...

Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is a powerful tool for physical mapping in human and other mammalian species. However, application of the FISH technique has been limited in plant species, especially for mapping single- or low-copy DNA sequences, due to inconsistent signal production in plant chromosome preparations. Here we demonstrate that bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones...

WRKY proteins, which belong to a large family of plant-specific transcription factors, play important roles in plant defenses against pathogens and herbivores by regulating defense-related signaling pathways. Recently, a rice WRKY transcription factor OsWRKY53 has been reported to function as a negative feedback modulator of OsMPK3/OsMPK6 and thereby to control the size of the investment a rice...

A rice tiller is a specialized grain-bearing branch that contributes greatly to grain yield. The MONOCULM 1 (MOC1) gene is the first identified key regulator controlling rice tiller number; however, the underlying mechanism remains to be elucidated. Here we report a novel rice gene, Tillering and Dwarf 1 (TAD1), which encodes a co-activator of the anaphase-promoting complex (APC/C), a multi-sub...

Plant colonization by bradyrhizobia is found not only in leguminous plants but also in nonleguminous species such as rice. To understand the evolution of the endophytic symbiosis of bradyrhizobia, the effect of the ecosystems of rice plantations on their associations was investigated. Samples were collected from various rice (Oryza sativa) tissues and crop rotational systems. The rice endophyti...