A 'T' phaseolin type variant in a primitive bean line

During an electrophoretic screening of the bean germplasm bank kept at the IGV, we found that a bean introduction had a T phaseolin type completely devoided of the beta polypeptides. These bean introduction (accession n MG113944) is a small seeded primitive line, awerage seed wieigh 39 mg, and was collected in Mexico in the Guerrero area. It is tempting to speculate that analysis of the DNA of this primitive bean could give clues of how phaseolin genes originated.