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MBE Advance Access published online on March 5, 2003
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msg048
Molecular Biology and Evolution © Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2003; all rights reserved
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Accepted October 20, 2002
© 2003 Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution

Original Articles

Colonization of Heterochromatic Genes by Transposable Elements in Drosophila

Patrizio Dimitri 1*, Nikolaj Junakovic 2, Bruno Arcà 3

1 Dipartimento di Genetica e Biologia Molecolare Università "La Sapienza", Piazzale A. Moro, 5 00185 Roma, ITALY; Centro di Genetica evoluzionistica del C. N. R., Piazzale A. Moro, 5 00185 Roma, ITALY
2 Centro di Studio per gli Acidi Nucleici, CNR, c/o Dipartimento di Genetica e Biologia Molecolare, Università "La Sapienza", Piazzale A. Moro, 5 Roma, 00185 - ITALY
3 Dipartimento di Genetica, Biologia Generale e Molecolare, Università Federico II, via Mezzocannone, 8, 80134 Napoli ITALY; Dipartimento di Scienze di Sanità Pubblica, Sezione di Parassitologia, Università "La Sapienza", Piazzale A. Moro, 5 Roma, 00185

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: patrizio.dimitri{at}uniroma1.it.


  Abstract

As a further step towards the understanding of transposable element-host genome interactions, we investigated the molecular anatomy of introns from 5 heterochromatic and 22 euchromatic protein-coding genes of Drosophila melanogaster. A total of 79 kb of intronic sequences from heterochromatic genes and 355 kb from euchromatic ones have been used in BLAST searches against Drosophila TEs. The results show that TE-homologous sequences belonging to 19 different families represent about 50% of intronic DNA from heterochromatic genes. In contrast, only 0.1 % of the euchromatic intron DNA exhibits homology to known TEs. Intra- and inter-specific size polimorphisms of introns were found which are likely to be associated with changes in TE-related sequences. Together, the enrichment in TEs and the apparent dynamic state of heterochromatic introns suggest that TEs contribute significantly to the evolution of genes located in heterochromatin.

Key Words: Heterochromatin, transposable elements, Drosophila


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