紅水稻是一種雜草,，這種雜草會(huì)影響水稻的產(chǎn)量和品質(zhì),，所以稻農(nóng)非常討厭這些紅水稻,。但是由于紅水稻和種植水稻屬于同種,，所以能殺滅紅水稻的除草劑同樣也會(huì)殺死水稻。

??現(xiàn)在美國(guó)國(guó)家自然基金（NSF）資助Washington大學(xué)St.  Louis分校的植物進(jìn)化學(xué)家112萬(wàn)美元,，進(jìn)行一項(xiàng)為期2年的計(jì)劃來研究?jī)烧咧g的分子差異,，這能幫助稻農(nóng)除去野草。這項(xiàng)計(jì)劃叫做植物基因組比較測(cè)序計(jì)劃,。

??Washington大學(xué)的生物學(xué)助理教授Kenneth  M.  Olsen說：“我們?cè)趯ふ以斐蓛烧咧g差異的可能基因,。而對(duì)這些差異了解越多就能更好的幫助控制野草。這項(xiàng)研究最大優(yōu)勢(shì)在于我們掌握了種植水稻的整個(gè)基因組,，所以能很方便的尋找感興趣的基因,。”Olsen和同事，Massachusetts大學(xué)的Ana  Caicedo,，美國(guó)農(nóng)業(yè)部的Yulin  Jia博士將測(cè)試兩種假設(shè),。其中之一是紅水稻是由水稻野生化得來的，另一種是雜草從亞洲傳入美洲然后雜交形成,。

??Olsen認(rèn)為紅水稻有很多野生物種的特征,，他說：“通過對(duì)基因的分析，我們可以找到這些特征的起源,，它們是否來自外來物種的雜交,？或者是由水稻去馴化得來？”

??為了控制這種雜草,，稻農(nóng)想出了很多辦法,，其中一些能去除很大一部分的紅水稻，但是這些雜草種子能在土壤中存活20年,，而且它們經(jīng)常發(fā)生變異,，其中一些看起來和水稻沒有區(qū)別，它們很難被區(qū)分出來。而Olsen希望這項(xiàng)研究能幫助找到控制這些雜草的辦法,。

英文原文：

Plant Biologist Checks Out 'Rice Gone Bad'

Red rice sounds like a New Orleans dish or a San Francisco treat. But it's a weed, the biggest nuisance to American rice growers, who are the fourth largest exporters of rice in the world. And rice farmers hate the pest, which, if harvested along with domesticated rice, reduces marketability and contaminates seed stocks.

Complicating matters is the fact that red rice and cultivated rice are exactly the same species, so an herbicide cannot be developed that seeks out only red rice. It would kill cultivated rice, too.

But now a plant evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) at $1.12 million for two years to perform genetic studies on red rice to understand molecular differences between the two that someday could provide the basis for a plan to eradicate the weed. The particular NSF program funding the research is the Plant Genome Comparative Sequencing Program.

Kenneth M. Olsen, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, believes that gene flow is one factor that has been at work.

“We are looking for candidate genes that underlie particular traits that differ between the two,” said Olsen. “Knowing more about the traits could help in potentially controlling the weed. We have a key advantage in this research in that we know the complete cultivated rice genome, so it's fairly easy to target genes of interest.”

Olsen and his colleagues, Ana Caicedo, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts, and Yulin Jia, Ph.D., of the United States Department of Agriculture National Rice Research Center, will test at least two hypotheses. One is that red rice is rice that's gone feral, or gone bad.

“In this scenario, you have a sort of selection favoring the weedy version of the crop that out-competes the crop itself,” he said. “That's called de-domestication.”

Another possibility, which is not mutually exclusive, is that weedy rice was introduced into the Americas from Asia, where weedy hybrids of the cultivated species and the wild species occur. These weedy strains then took hold in U.S. soils and began contaminating the U.S. cultivated species.

Meet the candidates

Olsen says that the weed has many characteristics of a wild species.

“By looking at candidate genes and those genes surrounding them we can test the hypotheses of the origins of traits and see if the traits have been introduced by hybridization of weedy and wild species, or, conversely, we can look at the molecular level to see if the de-domestication phenomenon is going on.”

To control red rice infestations, growers often will rotate crops away from rice to soybeans, for instance. And there are cultivation techniques that can eliminate most of the threat, although another nasty feature of the weed is its dormancy - its seed can lie viable in soils for up to 20 years.

There also is a great amount of variation in different red rice strains. Some look remarkably like cultivated rice and behave like cultivated rice. The plants are as tall as cultivated rice and flower at the same time. These “crop mimics” are difficult to spot.

Olsen hopes understanding trait differences can lead to eradication of red rice.

“We're looking for anything that exploits the difference between the crop and the weed and the way that the weed grows versus the way that the crop grows,” he said. “That's the way to eradicate it.”