Abstract
Recently, we have observed the insertion of a retrotransposon into the interleukin-6 (II-6) locus of a mouse somatic cell line. Here we report the characterization of Il-6 genomic regions from both mouse and rat. Restriction site analysis, DNA sequence analysis, and computer-assisted search revealed eight retrotransposon-like elements distributed over a 25 kilobase (kB) mouse Il-6 region. In the rat, five different retrotransposons have been identified within a 17 kb Il-6 region. The retrotransposons belong to the LINE-, Alu I or Alu II families, or to a rat specific class of retrotransposons. Some of the retrotransposons class of retrotransposons. Some of the retrotransposons exhibit characteristic features such as target site duplication and a poly A-tract. Remarkably, several retrotransposons map to different chromosomal locations in the mouse and rat. A genealogical tree of mouse, rat, and human Il-6 loci demonstrates a series of retrotranspositions that recently occurred in evolution. These results suggest that the Il-6 locus serves as a preferred target site for retrotransposon integration during evolution.
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The nucleotide sequence data reported in this paper have been submitted to the GenBank nucleotide sequence database and have been assigned the accession numbers M36993-4 (L.1.R3), M36995 (L1.R2), and M36996 (L1.M1/L1.M2).
This work contains part of the doctoral thesis of Z. Qin and I. Schuller.
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Qin, Z., Schuller, I., Richter, G. et al. The interleukin-6 gene locus seems to be a preferred target site for retrotransposon integration. Immunogenetics 33, 260–266 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00230504
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00230504