Résumé
In the last 7 years, several independent national initiatives have been launched for generating rice insertion libraries, characterizing flanking sequences at insertion points and gathering phenotype and sequence information in web accessible databases (Hirochika et al 2004). This effort has lead to the generation of more than 460,000 T-DNA lines and the release of more than 67 000 Flanking Sequence Tags (FST) in public databases. It is presumed that the full characterization of all these lines with other concurrent initiatives using the maize Ac/Ds and En/Spm transposable elements and the tissue culture stimulated, and endogenous retrotransposon Tos17 will enable rice geneticists to find at least one insertion in any rice gene and several alleles in most of the genes. We will survey the progresses accomplished in generating and characterizing insertion libraries in rice and identifying or validating genes of interest. In France, an effort of generation of 30,000 insertion lines characterized by 25,000 and 18,000 flanking sequence tags of T-DNA and Tos17 inserts respectively has been supported by the national genomics initiative Génoplante and the National Sequencing Centre Génoscope. Several research groups are using these resources together with other tools and resources for deciphering the molecular control of the grain filling processes, the response to biotic and abiotic stresses and determinants of plant architecture. Our group has focused its research on root development and plasticity in response to osmotic stress using both forward and reverse genetics approaches. Recent advances will be presented. (Texte intégral)