Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference Plant & Animal Genomes XIV ConferenceJanuary 14-18, 2006
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
Sharon Regan1 , Edward Harrison1 , Dan McPhee2 , Robin Vitez2 , Whynn Bosnich2 , Vijaya Sharma2 , Brendan O'Malley2 , Armand Seguin3 , John MacKay4
Much of what we know about plant growth and development has been enhanced by the analysis of mutants particularly in the model plant Arabidopsis. The mutant populations that have been useful are knock-out lines, single point mutation lines (such as EMS or radiation) and activation-tagged lines. When applying mutant technologies to other plants, a major consideration is the ease of transformation and the ability to produce homozygous lines in a short time. Poplar is quickly becoming an important model tree species, and one of the benefits is its relative ease of transformation. But unlike the short generation time of Arabidopsis that is typically just 8 weeks, poplars are not sexually mature for several years or even decades. For these reasons, we have made a large-scale mutant population of poplar (Populus tremula x P. alba) using activation tagging. This technology requires the transformation of the strong 4X 35S enhancer into the poplar genome, and the mutant phenotype arises because of an overexpression of a gene near the introduced enhancers. The major advantage of this strategy is that the effect should be dominant, so the overexpression (and thus the altered phenotype),will occur in the primary transformant and therefore there is no need to wait for the trees to mature and make homozygous progeny. We have analysed approximately 1000 of these activation-tagged lines and have found dramatic phenotypic alterations. In this presentation I will present several of these mutant lines and discuss the value of this population for the poplar research community.