Different Strategies to Persist: The pogo-Like Lemi1 Transposon Produces Miniature Inverted-Repeat Transposable Elements or Typical Defective Elements in Different Plant Genomes

Miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs) are a particular type of defective class II elements present in genomes as high-copy-number populations of small and highly homogeneous elements. While virtually all class II transposon families contain non-autonomous defective transposon copie...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Genetics (Austin) 2008-09, Vol.180 (1), p.83-92
Main Authors: Guermonprez, Helene, Loot, Celine, Casacuberta, Josep M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arabidopsis Proteins - genetics
Arabidopsis thaliana
Base Sequence
Brassica
Computational Biology - methods
DNA Transposable Elements
DNA, Plant - genetics
Evolution, Molecular
Genes, Plant
Genetics
genome
Genome, Plant
insertion polymorphism
Investigations
Medicago truncatula
Medicago truncatula - genetics
miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements
Models, Genetic
Molecular Sequence Data
Mutagenesis, Insertional
Mutation
pogo-like transposon
Polymorphism, Genetic
Retroelements - genetics
Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid
transposition (genetics)
transposons
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs) are a particular type of defective class II elements present in genomes as high-copy-number populations of small and highly homogeneous elements. While virtually all class II transposon families contain non-autonomous defective transposon copies, only a subset of them have a related MITE family. At present it is not known in which circumstances MITEs are generated instead of typical class II defective transposons. The ability to produce MITEs could be an exclusive characteristic of particular transposases, could be related to a particular structure of certain defective class II elements, or could be the consequence of particular constraints imposed by certain host genomes on transposon populations. We describe here a new family of pogo-like transposons from Medicago truncatula closely related to the Arabidopsis Lemi1 element that we have named MtLemi1. In contrast to the Arabidopsis Lemi1, present as a single-copy element and associated with hundreds of related Emigrant MITEs, MtLemi1 has attained >30 copies and has not generated MITEs. This shows that a particular transposon can adopt completely different strategies to colonize genomes. The comparison of AtLemi1 and MtLemi1 reveals transposase-specific domains and possible regulatory sequences that could be linked to the ability to produce MITEs.
ISSN:0016-6731
1943-2631
DOI:10.1534/genetics.108.089615