Transposon Insertions
From Kris Niyogi, summarizing responses to a bionet.chlamydomonas query March 1995
niyogi@nature.berkeley.edu
About 3 weeks ago I sent a request to the newsgroup for information about transposons and whether anyone had found “untagged” mutants from insertional mutagenesis that were actually due to transposon insertions. I received only a couple replies, which are excerpted below.
From Ursula Goodenough:
This is largely irrelevant to your question, but we’ve found 3 mutations in the sexual-fusion gene that are caused by Tcr1 (1x) and Tcr3 (2x). In two cases the strains were exposed to uv before the screen (whether the insertions were in fact elicited by the uv or preexisted in the culture is of course unknown) and the third was “spontaneous”. So, these things definitely happen.
From David Stern:
we had collected a few transposon probes on a couple of occasions when we thought things might be due to transpositions. although there are often polymorphisms none has ever segregated faithfully with a mutation. but the sample size is only two…
Thanks again to those who replied.
-Kris