Plant Transposable Elements and Functional Genomics.

Transposon tagging is the direct way of gene identification and cloning in living organisms. In plants, well characterized transposable elements are available from Zea mays and Antirrhinum majus. These have been used as simple insertion mutagens to clone genes in both native and several heterologous plant species. Transposon mediated techniques are also increasingly being used to study the pattern and regulation of gene expression in plants. Recently, transposons have been used in ingenious ways to bring about deletion and inversion of chromosomal segments. The transposon-based reverse genetics and its potentials in assigning biological functions to the known DNA sequences makes it useful in functional genomics.This review traces the developments in the use of plant transposons, from a simple technique for insertional mutagenesis to a powerful tool for gene discovery and study of gene function.