Insertional mutagenesis with Tos17 for functional analysis of rice genes

Genomic sequencing of rice followed by curated genome annotation predicted that the rice genome carries similar to 32,000 genes. To reveal functions of all the predicted genes is the next important challenge. One of the most effective ways to discover gene function is to analyze genetic mutations induced by insertion elements. Different insertion elements, such as T-DNA, Ds, dSpm, and the endogenous retrotransposon Tos17, have been utilized in rice and mutant lines carrying more than 1,500,000 insertions produced. In this article, features of Tos17, Tos17-induced mutant lines, related resources such as flanking sequence tags and phenome databases, and functional analysis of genes using these resources are reviewed.