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Ilyushko M.V. Oryza sativa L. transposable elements (review). Sel'skokhozyaistvennaya Biologiya [Agricultural Biology], 2026, Vol. 61, № 1, p. 57-71.
(how to cite this article)

doi: 10.15389/agrobiology.2026.1.57eng

UDC: 633.18:631.524.85.02:577.2

Acknowledgements:
The author expresses deep gratitude to RAS Academician Yu.N. Zhuravlev for the idea of generalizing information on rice mobile elements.

 

Oryza sativa L. TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENTS (review)

M.V. Ilyushko ✉

Chaika Federal Scientific Center of Agricultural Biotechnology of the Far East, 30, ul. Volozhenina, pos. Timityazevskii, Ussuryisk, Primorskii Krai, 692524 Russia, e-mail ilyushkoiris@mail.ru (✉ corresponding author)

ORCID:
Ilyushko M.V. orcid.org/0000-0001-7042-8641

Final revision received July 14, 2025
Accepted September 02, 2025

It is expected that global environmental changes in the next 50-70 years will lead to the creation of a qualitatively new habitat for many organisms, affecting agrocenoses, due to which the adaptation of agricultural crops to climate change becomes a complex breeding task. Rice Oryza sativa L. is one of the leading crops in world agriculture and a model biological object (N. Kurata et al., 2022). The action of mobile elements or transposons (TEs), increasing the variability of domesticated species, contributes to phenotypic diversity and the effectiveness of artificial selection (V.I. Glazko et al., 2022). The presented review systematizes knowledge about mobile elements of rice and their applicability in plant breeding. The paper provides a characteristic of TEs inherent in the genus Oryza L. and the cultivated species O. sativa (A.F. Tufan et al., 2020; S.Y. Jiang et al., 2013). The mobile elements contribution to the evolution of the genus is considered. It was revealed that LTR retrotransposons, being the main components of the Oryza genomes, are distributed primarily during polyploidization, affecting their size regardless of the subgenome type. In particular, Gypsy superfamily retrotransposons significantly correlate with the genome size (A. Fornasiero et al., 2025). Polymorphism of mobile element insertions allowed to conclude that the rice subspecies japonica and indica and the Aus/boro group are polyphyletic in origin, in contrast to previous ideas about their monophyletic evolution based on data on the key domestication locus Sh4 (shedding locus) (M. Carpentier et al., 2019). Using TEs, practical results were obtained to increase the productivity of O. sativa plants. Namely, three mutant forms with transpositions of Dasheng, mPing, Osr13, and RIRE2 near some genes, in particular, OsSPCH2 and OsCPS2, were created by irradiating rice seeds with high-energy heavy ion beams. As a result, the size and weight of seeds increased, and the period before plant flowering decreased (X. Wen et al., 2023). A number of studies have identified genes whose activation by TEs does not lead to phenotypic changes or leads to undesirable consequences for economically valuable traits (R. Akakpo et al., 2020; X. Wen et al., 2023). Mutations caused by transposition activity are inherited in a generations number up to M5 (M. Komatsu et al., 2003). The copy number of mobile elements plays a decisive role in the manifestation of agronomically important traits. When comparing two near-isogenic rice lines with one and three copies of HUO, a decrease in panicle productivity (seeds number and weight) and resistance to bacterial blight (Xanthomonas oryzae) was proven in the three-copy line (Y. Peng et al., 2019). It is proposed to detect O. sativa stress tolerance using IRAP markers of Tos17 mobility. Using the CRISPR/Cas9 technology in vitro culture, a rice regenerant with a target mutation causing deletion of theTos17 retrotransposon on the seventh chromosome was obtained, which opens up prospects for genomic editing of economically valuable genes damaged by TEs (H. Saika et al., 2019; Y. Luo et al., 2020). Thus, in the recent period, ways of practical application of knowledge about mobile genetic elements in crop breeding have been shown on O. sativa rice. Expanding the methods for prebreeding and combining it with existing capabilities will allow breeding to respond more flexibly to a dynamically changing climate.

Keywords: Oryza sativa, transposable elements, rice evolution, in vitro cell culture, breeding.

 

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