The pea light-independent photomorphogenesis1 mutant results from partial duplication of COP1 generating an internal promoter and producing two distinct transcripts
Ja. Sullivan et Jc. Gray, The pea light-independent photomorphogenesis1 mutant results from partial duplication of COP1 generating an internal promoter and producing two distinct transcripts, PL CELL, 12(10), 2000, pp. 1927-1937
The pea lip1 (light-independent photomorphogenesis1) mutant shows many of t
he characteristics of light-grown development when grown in continuous dark
ness. To investigate the identity of LIP1, cDNAs encoding the pea homolog o
f COP1, a repressor of photomorphogenesis identified in Arabidopsis, were i
solated from wild-type and lip1 pea seedlings. lip1 seedlings contained a w
ild-type COP1 transcript as well as a larger COP1' transcript that containe
d an internal in-frame duplication of 894 bp. The COP1' transcript segregat
ed with the lip1 phenotype in F-2 seedlings and could be translated in vitr
o to produce a protein of similar to 100 kD. The COP1 gene in lip1 peas con
tained a 7.5-kb duplication, consisting of exons 1 to 7 of the wild-type se
quence, located 2.5 kb upstream of a region of genomic DNA identical to the
wild-type COP1 DNA sequence. Transcription and splicing of the mutant COP1
gene was predicted to produce the COP-1' transcript, whereas transcription
from an internal promoter in the 2.5-kb region of DNA located between the
duplicated regions of COP1 would produce the wild-type COP1 transcript. The
presence of small quantities of wild-type COP1 transcripts may reduce the
severity of the phenotype produced by the mutated COP1' protein. The genomi
c DNA sequences of the COP1 gene from wild-type and lip1 peas and the cDNA
sequences of COP1 and COP1' transcripts have been submitted to the EMBL dat
abase under the EMBL accession numbers AJ276591, AJ276592, AJ289773, and AJ
289774, respectively.