Elucidating mechanisms of gene restoration

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Mendel's laws of inheritance have guided our exploration of classical as well as molecular genetics through much of the last century. According to these laws genetic traits segregate independently and are inherited stably from one generation to the next. Although notable exceptions to the law of stable inheritance exist, all have been relatively well defined. We have recently demonstrated that Arabidopsis plants homozygous for recessive mutant alleles of the HOTHEAD locus can inherit DNA sequence information that is absent from the chromosomal genome of their parents. Our published data suggest that sequences throughout the nuclear genome are susceptible to change and that both coding and non-coding regions are affected. Additional research results demonstrate that deleted sequences can be accurately restored and suggest that the process is template-directed. Not surprisingly, these findings are extremely controversial.