Extensive proliferation of transposable elements in heritable bacterial symbionts.

ABSTRACT: We found that insertion sequence (IS) elements are unusually abundant in the relatively recently evolved bacterial endosymbionts of maize weevils. Because multicopy elements can facilitate genomic recombination and deletion, this IS expansion may represent an early stage in the genomic reduction that is common in most ancient endosymbionts.

SUBMITTER: Plague GR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2223699 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature