MBE Advance Access originally published online on April 25, 2003
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Mol. Biol. Evol. 20(6):869-879. 2003
DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msg090
© 2003 by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. ISSN: 0737-4038
Hoppel, a P-like Element Without Introns: a P-Element Ancestral Structure or a Retrotranscription Derivative?
Institut Jacques Monod, UMR 7592 Dynamique du Génome et Evolution CNRS, Universités P. et M. Curie, D. Diderot, Paris, France
An in silico search for P-transposable-elementrelated sequences in the Drosophila melanogaster genome allowed us to detect sequences that are similar to P-element transposases. These sequences are located in the central region of 3.4-kb Hoppel elements, a class II transposon. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of the insertional polymorphism revealed that these elements are mobile. The 3.4-kb elements are the longest copies of this family ever found. They contain an open reading frame that is long enough to encode a transposase, suggesting that the 3.4-kb elements are the full-length copies of the Hoppel family. Multiple alignments of several P-element transposases from different species and the Hoppel-elementencoded peptide showed that all of the P-element introns and the 5' region of the transposase are absent from the Hoppel sequence. Sequence analysis combined with reverse transcriptase PCR analysis showed that the 3.4-kb Hoppel elements are intronless. P and Hoppel not only share similar amino acid sequences but also have terminal inverted repeats of the same length (31 bp), and their excision footprints present a similar structure, which suggests that their transposases are functionally very similar. Thus, we propose that the Hoppel element family be included in the P-element superfamily. Two evolutionary scenarios are discussed considering the presence /absence of introns within the P-element superfamily.
Key Words: Hoppel element P element transposable element introns Drosophila melanogaster
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