Abstract
Transposable elements were first detected in maize by Barbara McClintock and reported in the 1950s. These were revealed by experiments that were designed for a cytogenetic study involving the short arm of chromosome 9. It was in the progeny of plants undergoing the chromosomal type of breakage—fusion—bridge cycle that a burst of somatic instability and mutations appeared. Initially, McClintock focused on the breakage events occuring at a specific locus between waxy (wx) gene and the centromere on the short arm of chromosome 9. She termed this “the standard locus of Ds (Dissociation).” However, these breakage events required the presence of another autonomous element, which she termed the activator (Ac). She noted cases in which Ds activity disapeared from the standard locus and reappeared elsewhere in the genome. In addition, somatic instability was observed at several gene loci. Such mutator activity was also under the control of the Ac. McClintock made an operational distinction between genes and transposable elements. Genes occupy fixed loci and transposable elements can move from one location to another. Because the frequency and temporal occurrence of somatic instability were under the control of the Ds state and Ac dose, respectively, she called these “controlling elements.” McClintock (1951) also characterized another family of transposable elements which she termed Supprssor-mutator (Spm), which was independently isolated and characterized by Peterson (1961), but termed Enhancer (En).
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© 1991 Plenum Press, New York
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Notani, N.K. (1991). Plant Transposable Elements. In: Biswas, B.B., Harris, J.R. (eds) Plant Genetic Engineering. Subcellular Biochemistry, vol 17. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9365-8_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9365-8_4
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