The Rice Annotation Project Database (RAP-DB)

The Rice genome (Oryza sativa ssp. japonica cultivar Nipponbare) was completely sequenced by the IRGSP (International Rice Genome Sequencing Project), in December 2004, and Japan has been taking a leading role of this project. Now rice researchers are in new paradigm, namely "post-genome" (IRGSP, Nature. 2005 Aug 11;436 (7052):793 - 800 ).

With the completion of the rice genome sequencing, an annotation project has been promoted with the aim of annotating and manually curating all the genes in the rice genome, gathering numbers of rice researchers and annotators from all over the world (manuscript in preparation).

The Rice Annotation Project Database (RAP-DB) is to feedback this invaluable information to the rice research community (Nucleic Acids Research Database Issue 2006, in press). The RAP-DB has two different types of annotation viewers, search features with keyword or sequence homology. By connecting the annotations to other rice genomics data, such as full-length cDNAs and Tos17 mutant lines, the RAP-DB serves as a "hub" for rice genomics.

All of the resources can be accessed through http://rapdb.lab.nig.ac.jp/.

(References)

• IRGSP(International Rice Genome Sequencing Project)
• IRGSP Release (Build4.0) (2005.8.31)
• DDBJ HP:Link to Other web pages on Information Biology (databases for Rice)