Horizontal transfers of Mariner transposons between mammals and insects.

ABSTRACT:

Unlabelled

Background

Active transposable elements (TEs) can be passed between genomes of different species by horizontal transfer (HT). This may help them to avoid vertical extinction due to elimination by natural selection or silencing. HT is relatively frequent within eukaryotic taxa, but rare between distant species.

Findings

Closely related Mariner-type DNA transposon families, collectively named as Mariner-1_Tbel families, are present in the genomes of two ants and two mammalian genomes. Consensus sequences of the four families show pairwise identities greater than 95%. In addition, mammalian Mariner1_BT family shows a close evolutionary relationship with some insect Mariner families. Mammalian Mariner1_BT type sequences are present only in species from three g

SUBMITTER: Oliveira SG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3517439 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature