Abstract
Most animal genomes contain a large number of short interspersed elements (SINEs) that have a composite structure and contain a region that is homologous to a tRNA. The majority of SINEs have been found to be derived from a tRNALys, being categorized as members of a superfamily of tRNALys-related SINEs. The consensus sequences of five SINEs that belong to this superfamily were aligned. It was found that, in the tRNA-unrelated region, there are two sequence motifs that are almost identical among these five SINEs and are at a distance of 10–11 nucleotides from each other. This observation suggests a common evolutionary origin of these SINEs and/or some function(s) for these motifs. Similar sequences were unexpectedly found to be present in the sequences complementary to the U5 regions of several mammalian retroviruses whose primer is a tRNALys. On the basis of these findings, we propose a possible model for the generation of SINEs whereby they are derived from a “strong stop DNA” with a primer tRNA that is an intermediate in the process of reverse transcription of certain retroviruses.
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Okada, N., Ohshima, K. A model for the mechanism of initial generation of short interspersed elements (SINEs). J Mol Evol 37, 167–170 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02407352
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02407352