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An abundant and heavily truncated non-LTR retrotransposon (LINE) family in Beta vulgaris

Plant Molecular Biology volume 71, pages 585–597 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

We describe a non-LTR retrotransposon family, BvL, of the long interspersed nuclear elements L1 clade isolated from sugar beet (Beta vulgaris). Characteristic molecular domains of three full-length BvL elements were determined in detail, showing that coding sequences are interrupted and most likely non-functionally. In addition, eight highly conserved endonuclease regions were defined by comparison with other plant LINEs. The abundant BvL family is widespread within the genus Beta, however, the vast majority of BvL copies are extremely 5′ truncated indicating an error-prone reverse transcriptase activity. The dispersed distribution of BvL copies on all sugar beet chromosomes with exclusion of most heterochromatic regions was shown by fluorescent in situ hybridization. The analysis of BvL 3′ end sequences and corresponding flanking regions, respectively, revealed the preferred integration of BvL into A/T-rich regions of the sugar beet genome, but no specific target sequences.

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Acknowledgments

We thank I. Walter for technical assistance on FISH experiments. This work is funded in part by the BMBF grant ‘Verbundprojekt GABI-Beet Physical map: Physikalische Genomkarte der Zuckerrübe zur Nutzung in der Pflanzenzüchtung’, sub-projects 0313127B and 0313127E.

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Affiliations

  1. Institute of Botany, Dresden University of Technology, 01062, Dresden, Germany

    Torsten Wenke, Axel V. Horn & Thomas Schmidt

  2. Institute of Genome Research, University of Bielefeld, 33594, Bielefeld, Germany

    Daniela Holtgräwe & Bernd Weisshaar

  3. Department of Biology, Dresden University of Technology, 01062, Dresden, Germany

    Thomas Schmidt

Authors
  1. Torsten Wenke
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  2. Daniela Holtgräwe
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  3. Axel V. Horn
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  4. Bernd Weisshaar
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  5. Thomas Schmidt
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Schmidt.

Additional information

Nucleotide sequences reported are available in EMBL database under the accession numbers FM993986, FM993987, FM994099-FM994113.

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Wenke, T., Holtgräwe, D., Horn, A.V. et al. An abundant and heavily truncated non-LTR retrotransposon (LINE) family in Beta vulgaris . Plant Mol Biol 71, 585–597 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-009-9542-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-009-9542-6

Keywords

  • Beta vulgaris
  • Sugar beet
  • Long interspersed nuclear elements
  • Non-LTR retrotransposon
  • Fluorescent in situ hybridization