Organelle inheritance

Genes located on the plastid genome are inherited in a non-Mendelian fashion. In most plants like Arabidopsis, rapeseed and petunia these genes are inherited maternally. We generated a transplastomic rapeseed plant T36 which expresses the herbicide resistant marker BAR from the plastid genome. In reciprocal test crosses we analyzed the transmission through the maternal (egg cell) and paternal (sperm cell) germline. When the transplastomic rapeseed T36 was used as female all progeny plants carried the herbicide resistant marker; however, when the transplastomic rapeseed T36 was used a male none of the analyzed progeny carried the herbicide resistant marker. Thus, transgenes located on the rapeseed plastid genome are within a natural confinement system, because these genes are not distributed via the pollen to non-transgenic rapeseed plants. To elucidate the molecular mechanism of uniparental inheritance, a genetic approach in petunia is pursued.

Image: Reciprocal test crosses between T36 and WT rapeseed plants

Contact

Anja Schneider
+49 89 2180 74696
anja.schneider@lrz.uni-muenchen.de