RESEARCH ARTICLE The endogenous transposable element Tgm9 is suitable for generating knockout mutants for functional analyses of soybean genes and genetic improvement in soybean Devinder Sandhu1*, Jayadri Ghosh2, Callie Johnson3, Jordan Baumbach2, Eric Baumert3, Tyler Cina3, David Grant2,4, Reid G. Palmer2,4², Madan K. Bhattacharyya2* a1111111111 1 USDA-ARS, US Salinity Laboratory, Riverside, CA, United States of America, 2 Department of Agronomy, a1111111111 Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States of America, 3 Department of Biology, University of Wisconsin- a1111111111 Stevens Point, Stevens Point, WI, United States of America, 4 USDA-ARS Corn Insects and Crop Genomics a1111111111 Research Unit, Ames, IA, United States of America a1111111111 ² Deceased. *
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[email protected] (MKB) OPEN ACCESS Abstract Citation: Sandhu D, Ghosh J, Johnson C, In soybean, variegated flowers can be caused by somatic excision of the CACTA-type trans- Baumbach J, Baumert E, Cina T, et al. (2017) The posable element Tgm9 from Intron 2 of the DFR2 gene encoding dihydroflavonol-4-reduc- endogenous transposable element Tgm9 is suitable for generating knockout mutants for tase of the anthocyanin pigment biosynthetic pathway. DFR2 was mapped to the W4 locus, functional analyses of soybean genes and genetic where the allele containing Tgm9 was termed w4-m. In this study we have demonstrated improvement in soybean. PLoS ONE 12(8): that previously identified morphological mutants (three chlorophyll deficient mutants, one e0180732. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. male sterile-female fertile mutant, and three partial female sterile mutants) were caused by pone.0180732 insertion of Tgm9 following its excision from DFR2.