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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1452592
This article is part of the Research Topic Plant Plasticity and Epigenetics View all 5 articles

Activation Characteristics of Ty3-retrotransposons After Spaceflight and Genetic Stability of Insertion Sites in Rice Progeny

Provisionally accepted
Qing Yang Qing Yang 1Lishan Chen Lishan Chen 1Meng Zhang Meng Zhang 1Wei Wang Wei Wang 1Binquan Zhang Binquan Zhang 2Dazhuang Zhou Dazhuang Zhou 2Yeqing Sun Yeqing Sun 1*
  • 1 Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China
  • 2 National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The space environment is mutagenic and may induce genomic and phenotypic variations. To analyze the activation characteristics of Ty3-retrotransposons and genetic stability of insertion sites in rice progeny after spaceflight, seeds of Nipponbare, DN416, and DN423 were exposed on board the SJ-10 recoverable satellite for 12.5 days. The study found that the retrotransposons of ancient and young transposon families underwent demethylation from the tillering to heading stages of Nipponbare plants, which were F0 generation of space-exposed seeds, when the Nipponbare seeds were hit by single space high charge and energy (HZE) particles with LET ≥ 100 keV/μm. the transcription levels significantly increased in ancient transposon families (osr30, osr40, and rire10) and young transposon families (dagul, rn215-125, osr37, RLG_15, osr34, rire8, rire3, rire2, and hopi) (p ≤ 0.05) when LET > 100 keV/μm. Furthermore, the young Ty3-retrotransposons, which included the hopi, squiq, dasheng, rire2, rire3, rire8, osr34, rn_215-125, dagul, and RLG_15 families, underwent 1 to 8 transpositions in the F3 to F5 of DN416 and DN423 mutants, and some of these transposon insertion sites were stably inherited. The research holds great significance for understanding the activation characteristics of Ty3-retrotransposons in the rice genome induced by space radiation and the genetic characteristics of transposon insertion sites in its progeny.

    Keywords: Ty3-retrotransposons, space HZE particles, DNA Methylation, spaceflight, rice

    Received: 21 Jun 2024; Accepted: 13 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Yang, Chen, Zhang, Wang, Zhang, Zhou and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Yeqing Sun, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, 116026, Liaoning Province, China

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