title: Phylogenetic analysis reveals stowaway-like elements may represent a fourth family of the IS630-Tc1-mariner superfamily.
abstract: The genomes of plants, like virtually all other eukaryotic organisms, harbor a diverse array of mobile elements, or transposons. In terms of numbers, the predominant type of transposons in many plants is the miniature inverted-repeat transposable element (MITE). There are three archetypal MITEs, known as Tourist, Stowaway, and Emigrant, each of which can be defined by a specific terminal inverted-repeat (TIR) sequence signature. Although their presence was known for over a decade, only recently have open reading frames (ORFs) been identified that correspond to putative transposases for each of the archetypes. We have identified two Stowaway elements that encode a putative transposase and are similar to members of the previously characterized IS630-Tc1-mariner superfamily. In this report, we provide a high-resolution phylogenetic analysis of the evolutionary relationship between Stowaway, Emigrant, and members of the IS630-Tc1-mariner superfamily. We show that although Emigrant is closely related to the pogo-like family of elements, Stowaway may represent a novel family. Integration of our results with previously published data leads to the conclusion that the three main types of MITEs have different evolutionary histories despite similarity in structure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
authors.forename: Kime
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Turcotte
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bureau
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D019895:Transposases / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D019895:Transposases