Application of Allele Specific PCR in Identifying Offspring Genotypes of Bi-Allelic Mutant Lines in Rice.

Bi-allelic mutant lines induced by clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR associated (Cas) systems are important genetic materials. It is very important to establish a rapid and cheap method in identifying homozygous mutant plants from offspring segregation populations of bi-allelic mutant lines. In this study, the offspring genotypes of rice bi-allelic mutant lines were identified using the allele specific PCR (AS-PCR) method. The target sequences of two alleles were aligned from their 5' to 3' ends, and the first different bases were used as the 3' ends of mismatch primers. Another mismatched base was introduced at the third nucleotide from the 3' end of mismatch primer. The PCR reaction mixture and amplification program were optimized according to the differences of mutation target sequence and mismatch primers. The offspring plant genotypes of bi-allelic mutant lines could be accurately identified using the amplified DNA fragments by agarose gel electrophoresis. This study could provide a method reference for the rapid screening of homozygous mutant plants from offspring segregation population of heterozygous and bi-allelic mutant lines.