RNA-MEDIATED TRANSPOSITION OF THE TOBACCO RETROTRANSPOSON TNT1 IN ARABIDOPSIS-THALIANA

The tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) retrotransposon Tnt1 was introduced in to Arabidopsis thaliana. In this heterologous host plant species, Tnt1 undergoes an RNA-mediated transposition and creates a 5 bp duplicatio n at the insertion sites. This is the first report of transposition of a retrotransposon after introduction into a heterologous host species . Tnt1 transposed during in vitro regeneration of transformed A.thalia na, but no transposition event was detected as happening in T2 and T3 generation plants. Newly synthesized copies of Tnt1 can integrate into coding regions of the host DNA. Our results open up the possibility o f using Tnt1 as a new tool for insertional mutagenesis and functional analysis of plant genomes, in addition to the strategies of T-DNA and transposon tagging.