Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Scientific Correspondence
  • Published:

UV-B damage amplified by transposons in maize

Abstract

While absorbing visible light energy for photosynthesis, plants are unavoidably exposed to ultraviolet radiation, which is particularly harmful at shorter wavelengths (UV-B radiation). Ozone depletion in the atmosphere means that plants receive episodic or steadily increasing doses of UV-B, which damages their photosynthetic reaction centres, crosslinks cellular proteins, and induces mutagenic DNA lesions1. Plant adaptive mechanisms of shielding and repair are therefore critical to survival — for example, somatic tissues of maize and Arabidopsis defective in phenolic sunscreen pigments2, 3 incur increased DNA damage, and mutants defective in DNA repair4,5 are killed by UV-B.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Mutator transposon properties.
Figure 2: Northern blot to detect mudrA transposase transcripts.

References

  1. Rozema, J., van de Staaij, J., Björn, L. O. & Caldwell, M. Trends Ecol. Evol. 12, 22–28 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Stapleton, A. E. & Walbot, V. Plant Physiol. 105, 881–889 ( 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Landry, L. G., Chapple, C. C. S. & Last, R. L. Plant Physiol. 109, 1159– 1166 (1995).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Britt, A. B., Chen, J. -J., Wykoff, D. & Mitchell, D. Science 261, 1571–1574 (1993).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Landry, L. G. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 94, 328– 332 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Chrispeels, H. E. Effects of Ultraviolet Radiation on Maize. Thesis, Stanford Univ. (1996).

  7. Walbot, V. Mol. Gen. Genet. 234, 353–360 (1992).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Benito, M. -I. & Walbot, V. Mol. Cell. Biol. 17, 5165–5175 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Kidwell, M. G. & Lisch, D. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 94, 7704–7711 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  10. McClintock, B. Science 226, 792–801 ( 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  11. SanMiguel, P.et al. Science 273, 765– 769 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Walbot, V. Trends Plant Sci. 1, 27–32 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Walbot, V. UV-B damage amplified by transposons in maize. Nature 397, 398–399 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/17043

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/17043

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing