title: Zeon-1, a member of a new maize retrotransposon family.
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, designated Zeon-1. This middle repetitive element of 7313 bp had two long terminal repeats, a primer binding site, a polypurine tract and a gag-related open reading frame of 375 amino acids. Transcripts of the gag-related region were detected by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in certain maize tissues, and Western blots detected the gag-related protein in the same tissues. Moreover, the product of this mitotic rearrangement was shown to contain the same insertion site and 3' LTR as Zeon-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.
authors.affiliation: Waksman Institute, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, Piscataway 08855-0759, USA.
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: O P
authors.initials: OP
authors.lastname: Das
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Messing
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D018744:DNA, Plant; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D017343:Genes, Plant; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D018626:Retroelements; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D003313:Zea mays / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D018744:DNA, Plant; D010940:Plant Proteins; D018626:Retroelements; C095699:Zeon1 gag protein, Zea mays