APPEARANCE OF FLOWER VARIEGATION IN THE MUTABLE SPECKLED LINE OF THE JAPANESE MORNING GLORY IS CONTROLLED BY 2 GENETIC ELEMENTS

The speckled mutant of the Japanese morning glory blooms pale yellow f lowers with fine and round colored spots, or speckles, distributed ove r the corolla. Since it also occasionally produces flowers with colore d sectors apparently due to somatic mutations, the mutable speckled al lele is thought to carry a transposable element. In this paper, we sho w that the appearance of the variegation phenotypes in the speckled mu tant was controlled not only by the recessive speckled allele but also by a dominant genetic element, termed speckled-activator. Our results also indicated that the recessive c-l mutation affecting pigmentation of flowers and mapped near the speckled locus causes a defect in a re gulatory gene controlling the expression of structural genes for antho cyanin biosynthesis.