Unstable liaisons: the use of transposons in plant genetic engineering.

Transposable elements can be used to activate gene expression in clonal populations of cells and consequently to generate genetic mosaics. Plant mosaics, having organs composed of intermixed tissues with wild-type and mutant appearance, can be used to evaluate whether the action of a morphogenetic gene is cell-autonomous. Transposon-split gene constructions could also be used to raise plants transgenic for lethal genes and, in more general terms, they could be an ancillary tool in several types of biological experiment.