MUTAGENESIS OF A RACE-SPECIFIC RUST RESISTANCE GENE IN ANTIRRHINUM-MAJUS USING A TRANSPOSON-TAGGING PROTOCOL

In a transposon tagging experiment, lines of Antirrhinum majus exhibiting both race-specific resistance (homozygous for the dominant R gene) to the rust pathogen Puccinia antirrhini and a high frequency of transposition were crossed with homozygous susceptible lines. From a screen of 11 153 F1 progeny, 15 individuals were detected showing susceptibility to rust race alpha. Six of these exhibited a susceptibility phenotype (classified as type B) not previously observed. A control experiment involving the same tagging strategy but employing lines that do not exhibit high rates of transposition did not yield any susceptible mutants from a screen of 6243 progeny. In experiments on the heritability and stability of the mutation, the six plants exhibiting susceptibility phenotype B produced progeny in which the R locus had reverted to an active form (i.e. some of the progeny were resistant), a classic characteristic of transposon-tagged plant genes. Reversion was shown to occur somatically, and its rate was temperature dependent. Inheritance studies showed that the mutations in two of the susceptible plants from the tagging protocol map at, or very close to, the race alpha-specific resistance gene. The results are consistent with the transposon tagging of a race-specific gene for rust resistance.