Host: The Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists
Pages 0060
Somaclonal variation is a phenomenon that results in phenotypic variation in plants regenerated from cell culture. Previously, we found that an endogenous retrotransposon, Tos17, is activated and transposed in cultured rice cells. Large scale phenotyping of 50,000 Tos17 insertion lines revealed that additional factors were likely to be responsible for somaclonal variation in these lines. We analyzed whole genome sequences of Tos17 insertion lines by next generation sequencing with a new strategy using a relational database. We found that many single point mutations, insertions and deletions occurred in the rice genome during cell culture. These mutations are a likely cause of the somaclonal variation. Our strategy could be applied to determine whether these types of mutations occur at high frequencies in cultured cells of other organisms, including the stem cells of animals. This strategy can also be applied to gene mapping and isolation, and to the diagnosis of disease.
