In the small flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana, IREG1 (Iron Regulated Transporter 1) is involved in iron transport. This study is focusing on the characterization of IREG1 mutants to ultimately assess how iron transport is affected by citrate and kanamycin. Insertional mutants from the Salk Collection were grown along with WT plants for DNA extraction. A PCR strategy that makes use of three primers: forward, reverse and one that anneals to the T-DNA insertion was used such that homozygous IREG1 mutant lines will produce a fragment ~ 400 bp. The heterozygous lines will exhibit one fragment ~ 400 bp and another at ~900 bp. PCR was performed on template DNA and homozygous mutants were identified. The phenotype of plants was then examined when plants were grown in the presence of kanamycin and indicated that the IREG1 mutants we highly sensitive to the antibiotic.
