In-depth view of structure, activity, and evolution of rice chromosome 10.

Rice is the world's most important food crop and a model for cereal research. At 430 megabases in size, its genome is the most compact of the cereals. We report the sequence of chromosome 10, the smallest of the 12 rice chromosomes (22.4 megabases), which contains 3471 genes. Chromosome 10 contains considerable heterochromatin with an enrichment of repetitive elements on 10S and an enrichment of expressed genes on 10L. Multiple insertions from organellar genomes were detected. Collinearity was apparent between rice chromosome 10 and sorghum and maize. Comparison between the draft and finished sequence demonstrates the importance of finished sequence.