题目:

Reduced function of the RNA-binding protein FPA rescues a T-DNA insertion mutant in the Arabidopsis ZHOUPI gene by promoting transcriptional read-through

作者:

Yaohua Zhang, Xin Li, Justin Goodrich,Chunxia Wu, Haichao Wei, Suxin Yang& Xianzhong Feng

刊物名称:

Plant Mol Biol

卷期页码:

2016 Jul;91(4-5):549-561

摘要:

T-DNA insertion mutants have been widely used to investigate plant gene functions. Unexpectedly, in several reported cases, the phenotype of T-DNA insertion mutations can be suppressed because of trans T-DNA interactions associated with epigenetic modification, which indicates that caution is needed when T-DNA mutants are used. In the present study, we characterized a novel process suppressing a T-DNAmutation. The spz2 (suppressor of zou 2) mutant was isolated as a suppressor of the phenotype of the zou-4 mutant caused by a T-DNAinsertion in the first intron. The spz2 mutation partially recovered the native ZOU gene expression in the zou-4 background, but not in two other zou alleles, zou-2 and zou-3, with T-DNAs inserted in the exon and intron, respectively. The suppressed phenotype was inherited in a Mendelian fashion and is not associated with epigenetic modification. The recovery of the native ZOU gene expression in the spz2 zou-4 double mutant is caused by transcriptional read-through of the intronic T-DNA as a result of decreased proximal polyadenylation. SPZ2 encodes an RNA-binding protein, FPA, which is known to regulate polyadenylation site selection. This is the first example of FPA rescuing a T-DNA insertion mutation by affecting the polyadenylation site selection.