Evidence for an ancient whole-genome duplication event in rice and other cereals.

Gene duplication has been proposed as an accelerator of evolution. Ancient genome duplication events have been identified in diverse organisms, such as yeast, vertebrates, and Arabidopsis. Here, we have identified a whole genome duplication event (WGD) in the rice genome, which took place prior to the divergence of grasses about 70 million years ago (mya).