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Characterization of new hAT transposable elements in 12 Drosophila genomes

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Abstract

In silico searches for sequences homologous to hAT elements in 12 Drosophila genomes have allowed us to identify 37 new hAT elements (8 in D. ananassae, 11 in D. mojavensis, 2 in D. sechellia, 1 in D. simulans, 2 in D. virilis, 3 in D. yakuba, 3 in D. persimilis, 1 in D. grimshawi, 5 in D. willistoni and 1 in D. pseudobscura). The size of these elements varies from 2,359 to 4,962 bp and the terminal inverted repeats (TIRs) show lengths ranging from 10 to 24 bp. Several elements show intact transposase ORFs, suggesting that they are active. Conserved amino acid motifs were identified that correspond to those important for transposase activity. These elements are highly variable and phylogenetic analysis showed that they can be clustered into four different families. Incongruencies were observed between the phylogenies of the transposable elements and those of their hosts, suggesting that horizontal transfer may have occurred between some of the species.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Drosophila genome projects for making sequences freely available to the scientific community; M. Sc. Lizandra Robe and Nina R. Mota for help with the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from FAPERGS (0411965 and 07511528) and CNPq.

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  1. Curso de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, RS, Brazil

    Mauro de Freitas Ortiz

  2. Departamento de Biologia, CCNE, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, prédio 16A-Campus, Santa Maria, RS, CEP 97105-900, Brazil

    Elgion Lucio Silva Loreto

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  1. Mauro de Freitas Ortiz
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  2. Elgion Lucio Silva Loreto
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Correspondence to Elgion Lucio Silva Loreto.

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de Freitas Ortiz, M., Loreto, E.L.S. Characterization of new hAT transposable elements in 12 Drosophila genomes. Genetica 135, 67–75 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-008-9259-5

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