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Results

Plants lacking one or two marker characteristics appeared in the F1 plants by crossing between the marker line as female and CS-Gc1aGc1a, thereas only a few mutants of Q were observed from the reciprocal crosses (
Table 1, Fig. 1). Since mutants did not appear in the control F1, it is clear that Gc1a, induced the mutations. The mutation frequencies were different among the genes (chi2 =12.5, df = 4 ), and the mutation spectra in both 1985 and 1986 were similar. Except for one case, chimeric mutants were not observed among the F1 mutants.

Germination of the F1 seeds was reduced when CS-Gc1aGc1a was used as the male parent due to the presence of many non-viable shriveled seeds (
Table 2). On the other hand, shriveled seeds were not produced by the reciprocal crosses nor by the control crosses.


Discussion

Three important features of Gc1a as a mutational inducer were revealed by the present study. Firstly, Gc1a causes mutations at higher frequency when it is transferred from the male gamete. Secondly, mutational frequencies are different among the five genes observed. Thirdly, mutational events must occur only in the first zygotic cell since it was observed that Gc1a derived from the male gamete mutated the genes from the female gamete and that most F1 mutants were not chimeric.

The first and third features of Gc1a as described above suggest that the Gc1a gene was activated in the male gametes, and inactivated before the first zygotic cell division. The genes originating from the male gametes also may have been mutated by the activated Gc1a gene. However, this was not detectable due to lack of marker genes besides Q in the male gametes. The mutants of the Q gene, for which mutation frequency was higher than among the other genes investigated, may have included those originating from the male allele. On the other hand, Gc1a derived from the female gamete hardly mutated the genes of male gametes with the exception of a few speltoid mutants which may be attributable to the mutation of Q from the female gamete.

Tsujimoto and Noda (1989, 1990) reported that most mutants of the Q gene caused by Gc1a or its related gene, Gc1b, are involved in chromosomal breakage at proximal sites of the Q locus and subsequent deficiency of the regions including Q. The break points did not appear to have fixed locations although it is unclear whether they are dispersed at random along the chromosomes. If the mutants of the other genes observed in the present study were caused by chromosornal deficiency of the segments including the genes, the mutational frequency of the marker genes would be proportional to the distance of the genes from the centromere. The genes Q and Hg are located in distal areas which do not link with the centromere (Rao 1983; McIntosh and Bennett 1978), C and Hp1 link with the centromere with 2.26 and approximately 30 cM, respectively
(Rao1972; Driscoll and Sears 1965). The distance of B1 has not been determined. However, Tsujimoto and Noda (1990) recently reported from the data of a deletion mapping that it must physically comprise 13% of the distal end of whole long arm of chromosome 5A. The mutational frequencies of the five genes tended to correlate positively with the distance from the centromere. However, more F1 plants should be examined before drawing a concrete conclusion.


References

Endo TE (1990) Gametocidal chromosomes and their induction of chromosome mutations in wheat. Jpn J Genet 65: 135-152.

Driscoll CJ and Sears ER (1965) Mapping of a wheat-rye translocation. Genetics 51: 439-443.

McIntosh RA and Bennett FGA (1978) Telocentric mapping of genes Pm3a and Hg on chromosome 1A of hexaploid wheat. Cereal Res Comm 6: 9-14.

Rao MVP (1972) Mapping of the compactum gene C on chromosome 2D of wheat. Wheat Inf Serv 35: 9.

Rao MVP (1983) Telocentric mapping of the squarehead (vulgare) gene Q on chromosome 5A of hexaploid wheat. Wheat Inf Serv 56: 12-13.

Tsujimoto H and Tsunewaki K (1985) Hybrid dysgenesis in common wheat caused by gametocidal genes. Jpn J Genet 60: 565-578.

Tsujimoto H and Noda K (1989) Structure of chromosome SA of wheat speltoid mutants induced by the gametocidal genes of Aegilops speltoides. Genome 32: 1085-1090.

Tsujimoto H and Noda K (1990) Deletion mapping by gametocidal genes in common wheat: Position of speltoid suppressor (Q) and beta-amylase (beta-Amy-A2) genes on chromosome 5A. Genome (in press).

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