Analysis of intragenic Ds transpositions and excision events generating novel allelic variation in rice

Even though Ac/Ds gene-tagging systems have been established in many higher plants, maize is the only major plant in which short-distance transposition of Ac/Ds has been utilized to probe gene function. This study was performed to evaluate the efficiency of obtaining new alleles and functional revertants from Ds insertion loci in rice. By analyzing 1,580 plants and the progeny of selected lines, the insertion sites and orientations of Ds elements within 16 new heritable alleles of three rice loci were identified and characterized. Intragenic transposition was detected in both directions from the original insertion sites. The closest interval was 35 bp. Three of the alleles had two Ds elements in cis configuration in the same transcription units. We also analyzed the excision footprints of intragenic and extragenic transpositions in Ds-inserted alleles at 5 loci. The 134 footprints obtained from different plants revealed predominant patterns. Ds excision at each locus left a predominant footprint at frequencies of 30-75%. Overall, 66% of the footprints were 7-bp additions. In addition, 16% of the excisions left 0-, 3-, 6-, and 9-bp additions with the potential of conserving reading frame.