070 Non-autonomous Maize Transposable Element, Dissociation (Ds) Transposed in Carrot (Daucus carota L.)

Abstract

Maize transposable elements, Activator (Ac) and Ds transformed into several heterologous plant species for transposon tagging of genes. Several genes in Arabidopsis, flax, petunia, tobacco, and tomato have been tagged and cloned by using Ac and Ds. We have double transformed carrot lines, B493 and B7262 with stabilized autonomous Ac and non-autonomous Ds element to develop a two-element based transposon tagging system. PCR and Southern hybridization indicated that Ds element transposed from T-DNA in calli, somatic embryos and transgenic plants. The insertion of Ds element into new sites in carrot genome after excision verified by GUS assay, Southern hybridization and inverse-PCR. Currently, the behavior of non-autonomous Ds element is being studied. Ds induced mutation will be screened in transgenic plants. These initial results demonstrate that the Ac/Ds-based transposon tagging system may work in carrot.