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MBE Advance Access published online on June 9, 2004
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msh188
Molecular Biology and Evolution © Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2004; all rights reserved
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Accepted June 3, 2004

Original Articles

Merlin, a New Superfamily of DNA Transposons Identified in Diverse Animal Genomes and Related to Bacterial IS1016 Insertion Sequences

Cédric Feschotte 1*

1 Department of Plant Biology, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA; Department of Genetics, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cedric{at}plantbio.uga.edu.


  Abstract

Several new families of DNA transposons were identified by computer-assisted searches in a wide range of animal species, including nematodes, flat worms, mosquitoes, sea squirt, zebrafish and humans. Many of these elements have coding capacity for transposases, which are related to each other and to those encoded by the IS1016 group of bacterial insertion sequences. Although these transposases display a motif similar to the DDE motif found in many transposases and integrases, they cannot be directly allied to any of the previously described eukaryotic transposases. Other common features of the new eukaryotic and bacterial transposons include similarities in their terminal inverted-repeats and 8- or 9-bp target site duplications. Together, these data indicate that these elements belong to a new superfamily of DNA transposons, called Merlin-IS1016, which is common in many eubacterial and animal genomes. We also present evidence that these transposons have been recently active in several animal species. This is particularly evident in the parasitic blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni, where Merlin is also the first described DNA transposon family.

Key Words: Transposable elements, DNA transposons, transposase, insertion sequences, IS1016


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