Natural Variation in the Distribution and Abundance of Transposable Elements Across the Caenorhabditis elegans Species.

ABSTRACT: Transposons are mobile DNA elements that generate both adaptive and deleterious phenotypic variation thereby driving genome evolution. For these reasons, genomes have mechanisms to regulate transposable element (TE) activity. Approximately 12-16% of the Caenorhabditis elegans genome is composed of TEs, of which the majority are likely inactive. However, most studies of TE activity have been conducted in the laboratory strain N2, which limits our knowledge of the effects of these mobile elements across natural populations. We analyzed the distribution and abundance of TEs in 208 wild C. elegans strains to better understand how transposons contribute to variation in natural populations. We identified 3,397 TEs as compared with the reference strain, of which 2,771 are novel insertions and 241

SUBMITTER: Laricchia KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5850821 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature