To study the regulatory expression mechanism of light-induced gene in rice, a full-length cDNA clone that encodes the light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b binding protein of photosystem II (LHCPII) was isolated. Double-stranded cDNAs were synthesized with mRNA isolated from the leaves of rice seedling grown in the light by reversetranscription and PCR implication. The PCR-amplified cDNA was directly cloned into a plasmid. The nucleotide sequences from this cDNA clone were determined. The cDNA clone contained a 798 bp open reading frame capable of coding for polypeptides with 265 amino acids. Northern blot analysis revealed that mRNA size for the cloned cDNA is 1.2 kb long and they are regulated at transcriptional level to express only in the light. Genomic Southern blot analysis using the cloned cDNA suggested that the gene for the cloned cDNA are present as a small multigene families in the rice genome.