Dorussen, D.; Knight, E.; Simmonds, J.; Borrill, P.

Active transcriptional compensation between gene duplicates (paralogs or homoeologs) has been proposed to facilitate functional redundancy, whereby mutations in multiple gene copies are required before a phenotype is observed. We tested whether transcriptional compensation occurs between homoeologs in response to premature termination codon (PTC) mutations in mutagenised wheat lines. Only ~3% of cases showed homoeologous upregulation in response to PTC mutations, suggesting that there is no widespread active transcriptional compensation between wheat homoeologs.