Genome-Wide Analysis of MuDR-Related Transposable Elements Insertion Population in Maize

Insertional mutagenesis has now been widely used to knockout genes for functional genomics. The maize Mutator transposons hold an advantage of high activity to construct large mutant libraries. In this study, a MuDR line was used to cross with an elite Chinese maize inbred line Z31. A total of 1000 M₁ individuals were planted and self-pollinated to generate their M₂ families. Experiments were conducted to investigate the insertion specificity of MuDR related transposable elements. Six hundred and ninety-five MuDR inserted flanking sequences were isolated with a modified MuTAIL-PCR method and analyzed with bioinformatics. Three hundred and seventy-four non-redundant insertion sites were identified and 298 of them were mapped to a single locus on the integrated maize map. The results revealed some prominent features of the MuDR-related insertions of maize: random distribution across the 10 chromosomes, preferential insertion into genic sequence and favoring some classes of functional genes.