title: Extensive proliferation of transposable elements in heritable bacterial symbionts.
abstract: We found that insertion sequence (IS) elements are unusually abundant in the relatively recently evolved bacterial endosymbionts of maize weevils. Because multicopy elements can facilitate genomic recombination and deletion, this IS expansion may represent an early stage in the genomic reduction that is common in most ancient endosymbionts.
authors.affiliation: Louis Calder Center, Fordham University, P.O. Box 887, Armonk, NY 10504, USA. plague@fordham.edu
authors.forename: Gordon R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Plague
authors.forename: Helen E
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Dunbar
authors.forename: Phat L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.forename: Nancy A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Moran
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics*; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D048889:Weevils / Q000382:microbiology*
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D004269:DNA, Bacterial