VHICA, a New Method to Discriminate between Vertical and Horizontal Transposon Transfer: Application to the Mariner Family within Drosophila.

ABSTRACT: Transposable elements (TEs) are genomic repeated sequences that display complex evolutionary patterns. They are usually inherited vertically, but can occasionally be transmitted between sexually independent species, through so-called horizontal transposon transfers (HTTs). Recurrent HTTs are supposed to be essential in life cycle of TEs, which are otherwise destined for eventual decay. HTTs also impact the host genome evolution. However, the extent of HTTs in eukaryotes is largely unknown, due to the lack of efficient, statistically supported methods that can be applied to multiple species sequence data sets. Here, we developed a new automated method available as a R package "vhica" that discriminates whether a given TE family was vertically or horizontally transferred, and potentially inf

SUBMITTER: Wallau GL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4776708 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature