Significant expansion of Vicia pannonica genome size mediated by amplification of a single type of giant retroelement.

ABSTRACT: Amplification and eventual elimination of dispersed repeats, especially those of the retroelement origin, account for most of the profound size variability observed among plant genomes. In most higher plants investigated so far, differential accumulation of various families of elements contributes to these differences. Here we report the identification of giant Ty3/gypsy-like retrotransposons from the legume plant Vicia pannonica, which alone make up approximately 38% of the genome of this species. These retrotransposons have structural features of the Ogre elements previously identified in the genomes of pea and Medicago. These features include extreme size (25 kb), the presence of an extra ORF upstream of the gag-pol region, and a putative intron dividing the prot and rt coding sequences

SUBMITTER: Neumann P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1526492 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature