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

Noa Sela, Adi Stern, Wojciech Makalowski, Tal Pupko, Gil Ast*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number41
JournalBiology Direct
Volume3
DOIs
StatePublished - 8 Oct 2008

Funding

FundersFunder number
Ber-Lehmsdorf Memorial Fund
EURASNET
Israeli Ministry of Science
International Communication Association
German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development
Israel Science Foundation40/05, 1449/04
Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Ministry of Science and Technology, Israel

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