Bacterial group II introns in a deep-sea hydrothermal vent environment.
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.
Podar
Mircea
M
Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts 02543, USA. mpodar@diversa.com
Mullineaux
Lauren
L
Huang
Hon-Ren
HR
Perlman
Philip S
PS
Sogin
Mitchell L
ML
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
D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D016337:RNA, Catalytic