Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Methods Mol Biol. 2021;2250:95-102. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1134-0_8.
Transposable elements (TEs) are the main component of eukaryotic genomes. Besides their impact on genome size, TEs are also functionally important as they can alter gene expression and influence phenotypic variation. In plants, most top-down studies focus on extremely clear phenotypes such as the shape or the color of individuals and do not explore fully the role of TEs in evolution. Assessing the impact of TEs in a more systematic manner, however, requires identifying active TEs to further study their impact on phenotypes. In this chapter, we describe an in planta approach that consists in activating TEs by interfering with pathways involved in their silencing. It enables to directly investigate the functional impact of single TE families at low cost.
转座元件 (TEs) 是真核基因组的主要组成部分。除了对基因组大小的影响外，TEs 还具有重要的功能，因为它们可以改变基因表达并影响表型变异。在植物中，大多数自上而下的研究主要集中在非常明显的表型上，例如个体的形状或颜色，而没有充分探索 TEs 在进化中的作用。然而，以更系统的方式评估 TEs 的影响需要识别活跃的 TEs，以进一步研究它们对表型的影响。在本章中，我们描述了一种在植物体内的方法，通过干扰参与其沉默的途径来激活 TEs。它可以以低成本直接研究单个 TE 家族的功能影响。
