Abstract
Plant transformation is now a routine practice in many laboratories around the world However it has been observed that sometimes the introduced gene becomes inactive. This inactivation could be reversible or irreversible. In this study the genetic behavior of an inactive transgene was observed. For this purpose a wild type chlorophyll gene CH-42 was introduced into a pale (ch-42) mutant Arabidopsis is by Agrobacternan mediated transformation. After transformation most of the plants showed green wild type phenotype. However, some transgenic lines did not show the phenotype of the CH-42 tiansgene and appeared pale ill color Four transgenic lines showing inactve CH-42 transgene were selected to study the segregation of the inactive transgene in the next generations. These transgenic lines with inactive insert were crossed to the wildtype and the CH-42 mutant plants The F-1 plants produced from these crosses were allowed to self fertilize and some of the seeds of these F-1 were germinated for analysts of the F-2 generation. The results of the reciprocal crosses of all four inactive lines were similar. The inactivation of transgene CH-42 was irreversible and the cellular gene at the CH-42 locus did not have any effect on the expression of the transgene.