Transposition patterns of unlinked transposed Ds elements from two T-DNA loci on tomato chromosomes 7 and 8

Abstract.

We have previously reported that unlinked transposed Ds elements originating from chromosome 4 of tomato preferentially inserted in chromosome 2. This observation, together with data from other studies, suggested that there may be absolute preferences for transposition, irrespective of the chromosomal location of the donor site. The aim of the present work was to verify whether the distribution of transposed Ds elements on chromosome 2 was non-random and thus whether, unlike the case in maize, unlinked transpositions in tomato are not distributed randomly. To do this, unlinked acceptor sites of Ds elements originating from two donor T-DNA loci lying on chromosomes 7 and 8 were mapped. Receptor sites for trDs elements transposed from the 1601D locus on chromosome 8 exhibited a non-random distribution (P<0.01). Eleven out of 46 independent transpositions mapped to chromosome 2 and, as this was statistically significant (P<0.01), proves that receptor sites for this element are not randomly distribution on the chromosomes. In addition, deviation of the observed number from the expected number of trDss was close to being significant for chromosome 4 (P=0.05–0.1). In contrast, the distribution of unlinked receptor sites for trDss derived from the 1481J locus on chromosome 7 was random. χ² tests were performed for each chromosome, and for chromosome 4 the difference between the observed and the expected number of trDss was very high but statistically non-significant (P=0.05–0.1). For chromosome 2 the difference was statistically negligible. Therefore, we conclude that chromosome 2 does not serve as a preferential receptor for the transposition of Ds elements independently of the location of the donor site.