Attempting to enhance the efficiency of T-DNA insertional mutant application in rice

Abstract

T-DNA tagging method is a high throughput system for identifying and cloning novel genes from T-DNA-inserted mutant population created via genetic transformation by Agrobacterium tumefaciens. However, the efficiency of using T-DNA-inserted mutant population to clone genes in rice was much lower than in Arabidopsis. In this study, a rice tagged line with two copies of T-DNA segments inserted independently to each other was screened out via a series of verification tests, including the co-segregated analysis between the mutated character and the sequence of T-DNA or the genomic sequence flanking inserted T-DNA. From this tagged line, two inserted incidents were separated from the progeny population of a plant heterozygous in two tagged sites, and some plants with the target trait and one of the inserted incidents were obtained, which were important basic materials for the subsequently co-segregated analysis between the mutated character and the sequence of inserted T-DNA, and for cloning the mutant gene in future. Based on this study, we have some thoughts about the gene cloning from the T-DNA tagged lines with more than one inserted sequence independently and put forward to discuss with colleagues.