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First evidence of miniature transposable elements in sponges (Porifera)

  • SPONGE RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS
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Abstract

Transposable elements play a vital role in genome evolution and may have been important for the formation of the early metazoan genome, but only little is known about transposons at this interface between unicellular opisthokonts and Metazoa. Here, we describe the first miniature transposable elements (MITEs, Queen1 and Queen2) in sponges. Queen1 and Queen2 are probably derived from Tc1/mariner-like MITE families and are represented in more than 3,800 and 1,700 copies, respectively, in the Amphimedon queenslandica genome. Queen elements are located in intergenic regions as well as in introns, providing the potential to induce new splicing sites and termination signals in the genes. Further possible impacts of MITEs on the evolution of the metazoan genome are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

DE acknowledges financial support of the EU under a Marie–Curie Outgoing International Fellowship (MOIF–CT–2004 No2882). JS, GC, and GW thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financial support (SCHM1469/3-1; Wo896/6-2 within SPP1174 “Deep Metazoan Phylogeny”). DH is supported by the Israel Science Foundation (600/06) and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent, NSF #EF-0905606.) The research was supported by an Australia Research Council grant to BMD. We thank Robert Baertsch for a local version of the UCSC Genome Browser and the A. queenslandica sequence library, Jürgen Brosius, Oliver Piskurek and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript and Marsha Bundman for editing services.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth- and Environmental Sciences & GeoBio-CenterLMU, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Richard-Wagner-Str. 10, 80333, München, Germany

    Dirk Erpenbeck & Gert Wörheide

  2. School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Australia

    Dirk Erpenbeck & Bernard M. Degnan

  3. Institute of Experimental Pathology, ZMBE, University of Münster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 56, 48149, Münster, Germany

    Jürgen Schmitz & Gennady Churakov

  4. Department of Zoology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Dorothée Huchon

  5. National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, 2024 W. Main St., Suite A200, Durham, NC, 27705, USA

    Dorothée Huchon

Authors
  1. Dirk Erpenbeck
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  2. Jürgen Schmitz
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  3. Gennady Churakov
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  4. Dorothée Huchon
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  5. Gert Wörheide
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  6. Bernard M. Degnan
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jürgen Schmitz or Bernard M. Degnan.

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Guest editors: M. Maldonado, X. Turon, M. A. Becerro & M. J. Uriz / Ancient animals, new challenges: developments in sponge research

Dirk Erpenbeck and Jürgen Schmitz have contributed equally to the paper.

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Erpenbeck, D., Schmitz, J., Churakov, G. et al. First evidence of miniature transposable elements in sponges (Porifera). Hydrobiologia 687, 43–47 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-011-0775-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-011-0775-4

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