The inheritance of a urease-null trait in soybeans

Four soybean seed urease nulls (lacking both the activity and antigen of the embryo-specific urease) were intermated and the F1 and F2 seed examined for urease activity. Both generations were without urease activity, and the nulls were therefore considered noncomplementing. In crosses of each null line to cultivars homozygous for the allelic, codominantly inherited urease slow or fast isozyme, the F1 seed expressed the embryo-specific urease isozyme of the urease-expressing parent. A 3 ∶ 1 segregation for presence and absence of urease was observed in progeny from F1 and heterozygous F2 plants. The F2 and F3 from fastXnull combinations revealed that urease-positive seed were all phenotypically urease fast, while the same seed from slowXnull combinations showed a segregation of one seed containing a fast urease, either exclusively or in a heterozygous state with the slow isozyme, for every 69 phenotypic slows. Data pooled from F2 plants which segregate for both the presence (Sun) and absence (Sun) of urease and for the fast (Eu1-b) or slow (Eu1-a) urease allele indicate that the null lesion (Sun) is linked to Eu1 by approximately one map unit. The evidence is consistent with two models: (1) sun is an allele at the embryo-specific urease isozyme locus (Eu1) and that a high degree of exchange (and/or conversion) within the locus results in a 1% recombination frequency between the null trait and urease allozyme; (2) sun is at a distinct locus which is separated by one map unit from the embryo-specific urease isozyme locus (Eu1) upon which it acts in the cis position. Polyadenylated embryo RNA from one of the null lines, PI 229324, exhibited no urease template activity in vitro. Thus, the lack of urease antigen is due to lack of accumulation of translatable urease mRNA. The availability of soybeans lacking seed urease should be extremely useful to breeders as a trait for linkage studies and to geneticists as a transformation marker.