The Cassandra retrotransposon landscape in sugar beet (Beta vulgaris) and related Amaranthaceae: recombination and re-shuffling lead to a high structural variability.

ABSTRACT:

Background and aims

Plant genomes contain many retrotransposons and their derivatives, which are subject to rapid sequence turnover. As non-autonomous retrotransposons do not encode any proteins, they experience reduced selective constraints leading to their diversification into multiple families, usually limited to a few closely related species. In contrast, the non-coding Cassandra terminal repeat retrotransposons in miniature (TRIMs) are widespread in many plants. Their hallmark is a conserved 5S rDNA-derived promoter in their long terminal repeats (LTRs). As sugar beet (Beta vulgaris) has a well-described LTR retrotransposon landscape, we aim to characterize TRIMs in beet and related genomes.

Methods

We identified Cassandra retrotransposons in the sugar beet reference ge

SUBMITTER: Maiwald S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7750724 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature