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Zeon-1, a member of a new maize retrotransposon family

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Abstract

We have previously shown that the tandemly duplicated 27 kDa maize storage protein locus underwent mitotic rearrangement to yield a single-copy allele in isolates of the inbred line A188. This rearrangement contains a new LTR retrotransposon, designatedZeon-1. This middle repetitive element of 7313 by had two long terminal repeats, a primer binding site, a polypurine tract and agag-related open reading frame of 375 amino acids. Transcripts of thegag-related region were detected by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in certain maize tissues, and Western blots detected thegag-related protein in the same tissues. Moreover, the product of this mitotic rearrangement was shown to contain the same insertion site and 3′ LTR asZeon-1, suggesting that this rearrangement occurs with unusual precision.Zeon elements were found to be present in teosinte and not present in the Gramineae wheat, barley, sorghum and rye.

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Author notes

  1. O. Prem Das

    Present address: Heartland BioTechnologies, L.L.C., 52806-1340, Davenport, IA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Waksman Institute, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 08855-0759, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Weiming Hu, O. Prem Das & Joachim Messing

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  1. Weiming Hu
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  2. O. Prem Das
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  3. Joachim Messing
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Communicated by H. Saedler

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Hu, W., Das, O.P. & Messing, J. Zeon-1, a member of a new maize retrotransposon family. Molec. Gen. Genet. 248, 471–480 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02191647

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02191647

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