Abstract
TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions IN Genomes) combines the formation of a population with high density point-mutations provided by chemical mutagenesis with rapid mutational screening in pools of DNA. It is mainly applied as a reverse-genetic method to reveal the function of genes with known DNA sequence, but also as a non-GMO knock-out tool for molecular breeding. The steps involved are mutagenesis, the development of the TILLING population including DNA isolation and pooling, mutation detection and identification of the respective phenotype. In all steps, numerous methodological choices and modification can be applied that will influence the outcome of the results. EcoTILLING is a variation of TILLING that is used to study the allelic variation of natural populations instead of mutation populations. It has many possible applications both in scientific research to study the genetic diversity at certain genes as well as in molecular breeding to search for new allelic variation and genetic markers.
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Backes, G. (2013). TILLING and EcoTILLING. In: Lübberstedt, T., Varshney, R. (eds) Diagnostics in Plant Breeding. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5687-8_7
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