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Ds transposon is biased towards providing splice donor sites for exonization in transgenic tobacco

Plant Molecular Biology volume 79, pages 509–519 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

Insertion of transposed elements into introns can lead to their activation as alternatively spliced cassette exons, an event called exonization, which can enrich the complexity of transcriptomes and proteomes. In this study, the first exonization event was detected when the modified rice EPSPS marker gene was inserted with the Ac transposon 5′ end, which provided a splice donor site to yield abundant novel transcripts. To assess the contribution of splice donor and acceptor sites of transposon sequences, we inserted a Ds element into each intron of the EPSPS marker gene. This process yielded 14 constructs, with the Ds transposon inserted in the forward and reverse direction in each of the 7 introns of the EPSPS marker gene. The constructs were transformed into tobacco plants, and novel transcripts were identified by RT-PCR with specific primers. Exonization of Ds in EPSPS was biased towards providing splice donor sites of the inserted Ds sequence. Additionally, when the Ds inserted in reverse direction, a continuous splice donor consensus region was determined by offering 4 donor sites in the same intron. Information on these exonization events may help enhance gene divergence and functional genomic studies.

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Abbreviations

TE:

Transposable element

AS:

Alternative splicing

PTC:

Premature termination codon

NMD:

Nonsense-mediated decay

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported by the National Science Council (Grant No. NSC98-2313-B-002-041-MY3) of Taiwan.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Agronomy, National Taiwan University, No. 1 Sec. 4 Roosevelt Rd., Taipei, Taiwan, ROC

    Kuo-Chan Huang, Hsiu-Chun Yang, Kuan-Te Li, Li-yu Daisy Liu & Yuh-Chyang Charng

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  1. Kuo-Chan Huang
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  2. Hsiu-Chun Yang
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  3. Kuan-Te Li
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  4. Li-yu Daisy Liu
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  5. Yuh-Chyang Charng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuh-Chyang Charng.

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Kuo-Chan Huang and Hsiu-Chun Yang contributed equally.

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Huang, KC., Yang, HC., Li, KT. et al. Ds transposon is biased towards providing splice donor sites for exonization in transgenic tobacco. Plant Mol Biol 79, 509–519 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-012-9927-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-012-9927-9

Keywords

  • Transposon
  • Exonization
  • Alternative splicing
  • Nonsense-mediated decay