The last decade has made Asian cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.) the model cereal crop for application of the main cell and molecular biology techniques. This includes genetic engineering- and now, with the on going sequencing of the whole rice genome and transcriptome, functional genomics. We present the experience accumulated in our laboratory on rice transformation technology and illustrate it with the case study of engineered insect resistance. The amenability of japonica rice to transformation has conducted to its routine use as a laboratory tool for understanding gene function and regulation on a gene by gene basis. It has allowed the large-scale introduction of insertional mutagens that are either the T-DNA per se or heterologous transposable elements such as the maize Ac/Ds system, as a step towards the ultimate goal of investigating gene functions and interactions at a genome wide level. We will survey our recent results in that field. (Texte intégral)