Perennial rice different distantly related perennials in the hopes that at least one of these strategies would enable genes from the perennial to be moved to the cultivated rice gene pool. Hu Fengyi, now deputy director of the Food Crops Institute at YAAS, worked on the IRRI perennial-rice project and was senior author of the paper that first reported on mapping of genes for rhizome production in rice. Using the F2 population derived from the Oryza sativa/O. longistaminata cross, two dominant-complimentary genes, rhz2 and rhz3 controlling rhizomatousness were mapped. These were found to correspond with two QTLs associated with rhizomatousness in the
Helitron (biology) Helitron (biology) Helitrons are one of the three groups of eukaryotic class 2 transposable elements (TEs) so far described. They are the eukaryotic rolling-circle transposable elements which are hypothesized to transpose by a rolling circle replication mechanism via a single-stranded DNA intermediate. They were first discovered in plants ("Arabidopsis thaliana" and "Oryza sativa") and in the nematode "Caenorhabditis elegans", and now they have been identified in a diverse range of species, from protists to mammals. Helitrons make up a substantial fraction of many genomes where non-autonomous elements frequently outnumber the putative autonomous partner. Helitrons seem to have a major role