Identification and exploitation of Petunia transposable elements: A brief history

Abstract

Although it is generally accepted that transposable genetic elements are ubiquitous, their full mutagenic capacity has been exploited in only a few species. Among plants these are, most notably, maize, Antirrhinum and Petunia. Representatives of all three major groups of class II elements, viz., HAT-, CACTA- and Mutator-like elements, have been identified in Petunia. Here we describe the Petunia two-element Act1-dTph1 system and the development of its application in forward and reverse genetics studies.