Structure and expression of plastid genes in seven spontaneous chlorophyll-deficient lethal mutants of rice were investigated. The genes included rbcL for photosynthetic CO2 fixation, psaA-psaB operon and psbD-psbC operon for photosystem I and photosystem II, rps14 and 16S rDNA for ribosomal assembly. Northern hybridization analyses indicated that all the mutants locked the transcripts for these plastid genes. Analyses with polymerase chain reaction revealed that three out of seven mutants contained plastid DNA that suffered various extent of deletion