Alternative Ac/Ds transposition induces major chromosomal rearrangements in maize

Jianbo Zhang; Chuanhe Yu; Vinay Pulletikurti; Jonathan Lamb; Tatiana Danilova; David F. Weber; James Birchler; Thomas Peterson

doi:10.1101/gad.1776909

Alternative Ac/Ds transposition induces major chromosomal rearrangements in maize

¹Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, and Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA;
²School of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois 61790, USA;
³Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA

Abstract

Barbara McClintock reported that the Ac/Ds transposable element system can generate major chromosomal rearrangements (MCRs), but the underlying mechanism has not been determined. Here, we identified a series of chromosome rearrangements derived from maize lines containing pairs of closely linked Ac transposable element termini. Molecular and cytogenetic analyses showed that the MCRs in these lines comprised 17 reciprocal translocations and two large inversions. The breakpoints of all 19 MCRs are delineated by Ac termini and characteristic 8-base-pair target site duplications, indicating that the MCRs were generated by precise transposition reactions involving the Ac termini of two closely linked elements. This alternative transposition mechanism may have contributed to chromosome evolution and may also occur during V(D)J recombination resulting in oncogenic translocations.

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Footnotes

↵4 Present addresses: Plot #51, Peda Rushikonda, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India 530045;
↵5 Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
↵6 Corresponding author.

↵E-MAIL thomasp{at}iastate.edu; FAX (515) 294-6755.
Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1776909.
Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.
- Received December 30, 2008.
- Accepted February 11, 2009.