title: Carpel, a new Arabidopsis epi-mutant of the SUPERMAN gene: phenotypic analysis and DNA methylation status.
abstract: The carpel (car) mutation affects the morphology of reproductive organs in Arabidopsis thaliana. car flowers have an increased number of carpels, on average 2.7 +/- 0.8 instead of two in the wild type. Through allelism test with fon1-3 and analysis of the methylation state of the SUPERMAN (SUP) gene in car mutants, we show that car is an epi-mutation of SUP. The methylation pattern of car is clearly distinct from that of fon1-3, another epi-mutation of the SUP gene. Methylation was found predominantly in Cp(A/T)p(A/G) triplets and in CpG pairs. We suggest that the extensive SUP methylation in car has arisen from an abundant methylation of a single CpG site that was already present in abscisic acid-insensitive (abi3-4) mutants, from which car was segregating.
authors.affiliation: Departement Plantengenetica, Vlaams Interuniversitair Instituut voor Biotechnologie, Universiteit Gent, Belgium.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rohde
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Grunau
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: De Beck
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Van Montagu
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rosenthal
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Boerjan
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics*; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; D001483:Base Sequence; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D019175:DNA Methylation; D017931:DNA Primers; D018744:DNA, Plant / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D015226:Dinucleoside Phosphates / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D010641:Phenotype; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D018547:Plant Stems; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; D017931:DNA Primers; D018744:DNA, Plant; D015226:Dinucleoside Phosphates; D010940:Plant Proteins; D014157:Transcription Factors; C096661:superman protein, Arabidopsis; C015772:CpG dinucleotide