Abstract: Bicoid is one of the important Drosophila genes involved in the control of embryo polarity and larvae segmentation. The protein encoded by bicoid is a homedomain_containing transcription factor, which organizes a group of polycomb genes expressed in early development of embryo and therefore named morphogen.In our previous work, one of rice cDNA clone, Rb24, which is significantly homologous to Drosophila bicoid gene, has been isolated (EMBL accession number AJ2771380). To work further on its function in rice, the Rb antisense gene fragment was transferred into rice by transduction of Agrobacterium tumefacies.The transgenic plants were characterized by Gus activity and PCR amplification. An obv ious change of transgenic plants was firstly found in seed development. About 50% of the seeds in transgenic plants were aborted. The rice embryo development was investigated by paraffin section,and the results indicated that cell and tissue differentiation was interfered during embryo development. ccordingly, Rb gene should be involved in regulation of rice embryo development.