A tale of two dead ends: origin of a potential new gene and a potential new transposable element.
An article in this issue of Molecular Microbiology by Cultrone et al. describes how a non-autonomous helitron element could arise from its autonomous parent transposon by deletion followed by readthrough into an adjacent gene and its promoter, thus providing a mechanism for distribution of a specifically regulated promoter sequence around the genome, where it would have the potential to evolve new functions.
Clutterbuck
A John
AJ
Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, Anderson College, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G11 6NU, Scotland, UK. j.clutterbuck@bio.gla.ac.uk
D004251:DNA Transposable Elements / Q000235:genetics*; D005800:Genes, Fungal / Q000235:genetics; D016681:Genome, Fungal
D004251:DNA Transposable Elements