Abstract
Although DNA transposons often generated internal deleted derivatives such as miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements, short internally deleted elements (SIDEs) derived from nonlong terminal-repeat retrotransposons are rare. Here, we found a novel SIDE, named Persaeus, that originated from the chicken repeat 1 (CR1) retrotransposon Zenon and it has been found widespread in Lepidoptera insects. Our findings suggested that Persaeus and the partner Zenon have experienced a transposition burst in their host genomes and the copy number of Persaeus and Zenon in assayed genomes are significantly correlated. Accordingly, the activity though age analysis indicated that the replication wave of Persaeus coincided with that of Zenon. Phylogenetic analyses suggested that Persaeus may have evolved at least four times independently, and that it has been vertically transferred into its host genomes. Together, our results provide new insights into the evolution dynamics of SIDEs and its partner non-LTRs.
Highlights
The eukaryotic genome is composed by a wide diversity of transposable elements (TE), some autonomous and some others nonautonomous (Chenais et al 2012)
A survey on the distribution of a Chapaev transposon named Garfield identified in our previous study (Zhang et al 2014) in some insects was performed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR): One PCR amplification band obtained from the Chinese tussar moth Antheraea pernyi was $350 bp longer than the expected band size
We found that Garfield from the Chinese tussar moth had an additional insertion of 352 bp
Summary
The eukaryotic genome is composed by a wide diversity of transposable elements (TE), some autonomous (i.e., coding for the enzymatic machinery necessary for replication and reintegration) and some others nonautonomous (i.e., dependent on autonomous-encoded enzymes for replication and reintegration) (Chenais et al 2012). Miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (Feschotte and Pritham 2007) and terminal-repeat retrotransposons in miniature (Gao et al 2016) are widespread elements, derived from internal deletions of autonomous DNA transposons and longterminal-repeat retrotransposons (LTR), respectively. Short internally deleted elements (SIDEs) originated from non-LTR elements seems to be rare, being only found in fruit flies, in the mosquito Anopheles gambiae and in the protozoan Trypanosoma brucei (Kimmel et al 1987; Biedler and Tu 2003; Eickbush and Eickbush 2012). Chicken repeat 1 (CR1) elements are non-LTRs, long interspersed elements (LINEs) and were the first TE found in the chicken genome about three decades ago (Stumph et al 1981, 1984). Compared with L1 LINE, 50UTR of CR1 elements are more frequently truncated, which imply a lower processivity of its transcription (Hillier et al 2004)
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