Why Sequence Maize Genome?
Recent completion of human, plant and animal genomes have demonstrated that genomic sequence is the most comprehensive way toward gene discovery – a first step toward identifying the role of each gene. The completion of the Arabidopsis genome sequence has been very informative as to the gene content of this organisms; and, this project has strengthened research programs throughout plant biology. Comprehensive understanding of gene function in crop plants such as maize and rice will require thorough investigations of their own genomes to identify all of their genes and to determine the function of those genes. The maize genome is large. It is estimated that up to 50,000 genes are distributed among the ten chromosomes of maize and contribute to an estimated haploid genome size of ~2.5 billion nucleotides. The vast majority of which is made up of a small number of retrotransposons that are highly repeated in the genome (Bennetzen, 1996; SanMiguel et al., 1996). Maize and rice share a comm
