Diversification of the rice Waxy gene by insertion of mobile DNA elements into introns

The waxy (wx) gene of Oryza glaberrima was cloned, and its nucleotide sequence was determined. A waxy mutant of O. glaberrima showing a glutinous phenotype was found to contain a substitution mutation generating a termination codon in the coding region of the wx gene. The Wx sequence of O. glaberrima was different from that of Oryza sativa by substitutions and insertions/deletions, among which only a few substitutions occurred in several exons not to severely alter the amino acid sequence of the Wx protein. The most striking difference observed in introns was a 139-bp deletion (or insertion) in intron 10 of O. glaberrima (or O. sativa). In O. sativa, 125 bp of the 139-bp sequence was flanked by direct repeats of a 14-bp sequence. A sequence homologous to the 125-bp sequence was found in the region preceding exon 2; this sequence was also flanked by direct repeats of another 14-bp sequence. This result and the observation that the 125-bp sequence was interspersed in rice genomes indicate that they are SINEs (short interspersed elements) in the plant system. We also identified a DNA sequence with long terminal inverted repeats in intron 13 of both O. glaberrima and O. sativa. This sequence was present in multiple copies in rice genomes, suggesting that it is a transposable element. These results obtained suggest that mobile DNA elements have diversified the rice Waxy gene by inserting into introns, each of which may originally have a length of about 100 bp.