title: Bacterial group II introns in a deep-sea hydrothermal vent environment.
abstract: Group II introns are catalytic RNAs and mobile retrotransposable elements known to be present in the genomes of some nonmarine bacteria and eukaryotic organelles. Here we report the discovery of group II introns in a bacterial mat sample collected from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent near 9 degrees N on the East Pacific Rise. One of the introns was shown to self-splice in vitro. This is the first example of marine bacterial introns from molecular population structure studies of microorganisms that live in the proximity of hydrothermal vents. These types of mobile genetic elements may prove useful in improving our understanding of bacterial genome evolution and may serve as valuable markers in comparative studies of bacterial communities.
authors.affiliation: Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts 02543, USA. mpodar@diversa.com
authors.forename: Mircea
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Podar
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mullineaux
authors.forename: Hon-Ren
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Philip S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Perlman
authors.forename: Mitchell L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Sogin
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements / Q000235:genetics*; D007438:Introns; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D016337:RNA, Catalytic / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D014871:Water Microbiology
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D016337:RNA, Catalytic