Abstract
The Suppressor-mutator (Spm) family of maize transposable elements consists of autonomous Spm elements and nonautonomous defective Spm (dSpm) elements. One characteristic of this family is that the insertion of dSpm elements into a structural gene often permits some level of structural gene expression in the absence of SpM activity, and this structural gene expression is suppressed in trans by Spm activity. The Spm's subterminal repetitive regions (SRRs) contain several iterations of a 12-bp repeat motif. It had been proposed that binding of an Spm-encoded protein to these repeat motifs blocks structural gene transcriptional readthrough, thus suppressing gene expression. The bz-m13 allele of the bronze 1 locus contains a 2.24-kb dSpm insertion in the second exon of a Bz allele. In the absence of Spm activity, bz-m13 displays substantial Bz expression, and this expression is fully suppressed by Spm. Four intra-dSpm deletion derivatives are described in which this Bz expression is only partially suppressed by Spm. Each of these derivatives retains at least 12 SRR repeat motifs. Thus the presence of these repeat motifs is not sufficient to guarantee complete suppression by Spm. Some other property such as secondary structure or element size must play a role.