title: Structure of the Chlorella Zepp retrotransposon: nested Zepp clusters in the genome.
abstract: Zepp elements found in the telomeric region of Chlorella chromosomes show the characteristic features of non-viral (LINE-like) retrotransposons, including a poly(A) tail, 5' truncations, a retroviral reverse transcriptase-like ORF and flanking target duplications. We have isolated and characterized a full-length Zepp element (8943 bp long) from Chlorella chromosome V. Some peculiar features of this element, including nested integration, two ORF structures, a long 3' noncoding region and a possible promoter region are compared with those of the Drosophila telomeric retrotransposons HeT-A and TART. The Chlorella chromosome-Zepp system appears to represent an intermediate stage between canonical telomerase-telomeres and Drosophila retrotransposon-telomeres.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biotechnology, Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Noutoshi
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Arai
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fujie
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yamada
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D002708:Chlorella / Q000235:genetics*; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D004330:Drosophila / Q000235:genetics; D016678:Genome; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D005810:Multigene Family; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D018626:Retroelements; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D016615:Telomere / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D018626:Retroelements; D004247:DNA