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1: Biol Direct. 2008 Oct 8;3:41.Click here to read Click here to read Links

Transduplication resulted in the incorporation of two protein-coding sequences into the turmoil-1 transposable element of C. elegans.

Sela N, Stern A, Makalowski W, Pupko T, Ast G.

Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. noasela@post.tau.ac.il

Transposable elements may acquire unrelated gene fragments into their sequences in a process called transduplication. Transduplication of protein-coding genes is common in plants, but is unknown of in animals. Here, we report that the Turmoil-1 transposable element in C. elegans has incorporated two protein-coding sequences into its inverted terminal repeat (ITR) sequences. The ITRs of Turmoil-1 contain a conserved RNA recognition motif (RRM) that originated from the rsp-2 gene and a fragment from the protein-coding region of the cpg-3 gene. We further report that an open reading frame specific to C. elegans may have been created as a result of a Turmoil-1 insertion. Mutations at the 5' splice site of this open reading frame may have reactivated the transduplicated RRM motif.

PMID: 18842128 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

PMCID: PMC2572040