Development of <i>mPing</i> ?based activation tags for crop insertional mutagenesis

Modern plant breeding increasingly relies on genomic information to guide crop improvement. Although some genes are characterized, additional tools needed effectively identify and characterize associated with traits. To address this need, the mPing element from rice was modified serve as an activation tag induce expression of nearby genes. Embedding promoter sequences in resulted a decrease overall transposition rate; however, effect negated by using hyperactive version called mmPing20. Transgenic soybean events carrying mPing-based tags appropriate transposase cassettes showed evidence transposition. Expression analysis line that contained heritable insertion mmPing20F indicated induced overexpression This represents significant advance gene discovery technology have potential more phenotypes than original element, improving effectiveness mutagenesis system.