Floricultural Traits and Transposable Elements in the Japanese and Common Morning Gloriesa^a

Abstract

The Japanese morning glory has an extensive history of genetic studies and over 200 different spontaneous mutant lines have been described. Of these, we identified that two mutable alleles, flecked and speckled, for flower variegations are caused by integration of transposable elements, belonging to the En/Spm family, into the DFR-B and CHI genes for flower pigmentation, respectively. The mutable flaked allele of the common morning glory bearing variegated flowers is caused by insertion of a new transposable element, Tip100, into one of the CHS genes for pigmentation and that Tip100 belongs to the Ac/Ds family. These results are discussed with regard to spontaneous transposon mutagenesis and generation of floricultural traits of morning glories.

A 94-bp Deletion of Anthocyanidin Synthase Gene in Acyanic Flower Lines of Lisianthus [Eustoma grandiflorum (Raf.) Shinn.]

“…In A. majus, combinatorial control by three alleles, Delila, Eluta, and Rosea, is known to be involved in the spatial regulation of flower pigmentation, and a nivea mutation affects chalcone synthase (Holton and Cornish, 1995). In Japanese morning glory, c and ca mutations conferring acyanic flowers were frameshift mutations caused by a 2-bp deletion and 7-bp insertions in the genes encoding the R2R3-MYB and WDR transcriptional regulators, respectively (Morita et al, 2006), and a-3 and Sp-1, which cause unstable acyanic flowers, resulted from a transposon insertion in the DFR gene and CHI gene, respectively (Iida et al, 1999). Davies et al (1993) analyzed the expression of some anthocyanin biosynthetic genes in the flowers of five lisianthus lines, including two acyanic flower lines.…”

Dynamics of mobile element activity in chalcone synthase loci in the common morning glory ( Ipomoea purpurea )

“…The relatively regular process of nucleotide substitution, which is predominantly responsible for protein evolution, appears to be supplemented by a variety of recombinational processes that yield gene duplications and rearrangements (1). In addition, a remarkable diversity of mobile elements have been shown to populate plant genomes and to be sources of mutational novelty (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10). Transposable elements are categorized into two major classes, depending on the mode by which copy number is regulated and on the mechanism of transposition (11).…”

“…In addition, the examination of allelic diversity within I. purpurea in the context of a closely related outgroup species allows us to infer the temporal history of some insertion events, which provides additional insight into transposon dynamics. In this investigation we use the closely related species Ipomoea nil (21) as an outgroup based on the detailed characterizations of insertion elements in the I. nil CHS-D locus provided by Shigeru Iida and his colleagues at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki, Japan (5). Finally, these data allow us to investigate whether insertion dynamics differ among the various types of mobile elements that reside in the CHS-D locus.…”

Cloning of the Flavonoid 3&apos;-Hydroxylase Gene of <i>Eustoma grandiflorum</i> (Raf.) Shinn. (<i>EgF3&apos;H</i>) and Complementation of an F3&apos;H-deficient Mutant of <i>Ipomoea nil</i> (L.) Roth. by Heterologous Expression of <i>EgF3&apos;H</i>

“…(Pharbitis nil Choisy) is a traditional horticultural plant in Japan from which a number of spontaneous mutants with various flower colors have arisen, particularly since the late Edo era . Most of these mutant lines have been maintained, and many of their mutations have been genetically defined (Iida et al, 1999(Iida et al, , 2004Imai, 1927). Nearly all of the structural and regulatory genes involved in anthocyanin biosynthesis have been identified (Chopra et al, 2006;Morita et al, 2006).…”