IMPAIRED SPLICING OF PHYTOCHROME-B PRE-MESSENGER-RNA IN A NOVEL PHYB MUTANT OF ARABIDOPSIS

Phytochrome is the red/far-red absorbing photoreceptor active in photomorphogenesis, the apoprotein of which is encoded by a small gene family (PHYA, PHYB, PHYC, PHYD and PHYE). A novel phytochrome B-deficient mutant, phyB-103, was isolated from a screen of EMS-mutagenised Arabidopsis M2 seed. phyB-103 carries a G-to-A base substitution at the 5' splice site +1 G nucleotide of intron 1 of PHYB. The phyB-103 PHYB transcript is larger than the wild-type PHYB transcript and DNA sequence analysis showed that the entire intron is retained in the mature PHYB transcript of phyB-103. Thus the phyB-103 G-to-A substitution prevents intron splicing. The retained intron contains within it an in-frame stop codon, and the predicted PHYB-103 apoprotein thus terminates prematurely. phyB-103 is therefore likely to be a null allele of PHYB, consistent with the observation that the phenotype conferred by phyB-103 is as severe as that conferred by previously described phyB null alleles.