Abstract: In the present study, we report a survey on a Miniature Inverted Transposable Element (MITE) system known as mPing in 102 varieties of Asian cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.). We found that mPing populations could be generalized into two families, mPing-1 and mPing-2, according to their sequence structures. Further analysis showed that these two families of mPing had significant bias in their distribution pattern in two subspecies of rice, namely O. sativa ssp. japonica and indica. O. sativa japonica has a higher proportion of mPing-1 as a general trait, whereas O. sativa indica has a higher proportion of mPing-2. We also examined the mPing system in a doubled haploid (DH) cross-breeding population of jingxi 17 (japonica) and zhaiyeqing 8 (indica) varieties and observed that the mPing system was not tightly linked to major subspecies-determining genes. Furthermore, we checked the mPing system in 28 accessions of Asian common wild rice O. rufipogon and found the mPing system in O. rufipogon. The distribution pattern of the mPing system in O. rufipogon indicated a diphyletic origin of the Asian cultivated rice O. sativa species. We did not find the mPing system in another 20 Oryza species. These results substantiated a previous hypothesis that O. rufipogon and O. nivara species were the closest relatives of O. sativa and that the two extant subspecies of O. sativa were evolved independently from corresponding ecotypes of O. rufipogon.(Author for correspondence.Tel: 021 6484 5260; Fax: 021 6482 5775; E-mail:　bhan@ncgr.ac.cn)

Key words: diphyletic, indica, japonica, Miniature Inverted Transposable Element (MITE), mPing, rice.