THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING AN INTRON, BY WILD....TYPE TUBULIN GENES

摘要

Introns of plant tubulin genes are important regulatory elements for supporting gene expression. Introns can either increase the level of expression through intron-mediated enhancement (IME), or they can change the actual site of gene expression. The molecular basis of both IME and intron dependent spatial expression (IDSE) remains largely unknown. IME and IDSE seem to be regulatory traits common to many cytoskeletal genes. Introns of tubulin genes are also useful tools for genotyping plant species and varieties, for parental assessment and for assisting breeding programs. This can be done with Tubulin-Based Polymorphism (TBP), a specific intron length polymorphism-based method that exploits both length variation and positional conservation of the introns of the plant beta-tubulin gene family.