MORPHOLOGICAL MUTANTS INDUCED BY TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENTS IN THE JAPANESE MORNING GLORY

摘要

During the developmental process of horticultural plants, the sources of genetic variations were generally derived from local varieties, sibling species, or spontaneous mutations. A group of cultivated plants called "Traditional horticultural plants (Dento-engei or Koten engei plants)" were derived from endemic, or species introduced long ago in Japan. In these plants, spontaneous mutations are the only source of genetic variation, and they were isolated from natural populations, in the case of endemic species, or from cultivated populations. In the latter case, especially, some of the spontaneous mutations are thought to be induced by active transposable elements because of their unstable characters.