A bidirectional gene trap construct suitable for T‐DNA and Ds ‐mediated insertional mutagenesis in rice ( Oryza sativa L.)

Summary A construct suitable for genome‐wide transfer‐DNA (T‐DNA) and subsequent transposon‐based ( Ds ) gene trapping has been developed for use in rice ( Oryza sativa ). This T‐DNA/ Ds construct contains: Ds terminal sequences immediately inside T‐DNA borders for subsequent Ds mobilization; promoterless green fluorescent protein ( sgfpS65T ) and β‐glucuronidase ( uidA ) reporter genes, each fused to an intron (from Arabidopsis GPA1 gene) to enable bidirectional gene trapping by T‐DNA or Ds ; an ampicillin resistance gene ( bla ) and a bacterial origin of replication ( ori ) to serve as the plasmid rescue system; an intron‐containing hygromycin phosphotransferase gene ( hph ) as a selectable marker or Ds tracer; and an intron‐containing barnase gene in the binary vector backbone (VB) to select against transformants carrying unwanted VB sequences. More than a threefold increase over previously reported reporter gene‐based gene trapping efficiencies was observed in primary T‐DNA/ Ds transformant rice lines, returning an overall reporter gene expression frequency of 23%. Of the plant organs tested, 3.3–7.4% expressed either reporter at varying degrees of organ or tissue specificity. Approximately 70% of the right border (RB) flanking sequence tags (FSTs) retained 1–6 bp of the RB repeat and 30% of the left border (LB) FSTs retained 5–23 bp of the LB repeat. The remaining FSTs carried deletions of 2–84 bp inside the RB or 1–97 bp inside the LB. Transposition of Ds from the original T‐DNA was evident in T‐DNA/ Ds callus lines super‐transformed with a transposase gene ( Ac ) construct, as indicated by gene trap reporter activity and rescue of new FSTs in the resulting double transformant lines.