title: A systematic identification of Kolobok superfamily transposons in Trichomonas vaginalis and sequence analysis on related transposases.
abstract: Transposons are sequence elements widely distributed among genomes of all three kingdoms of life, providing genomic changes and playing significant roles in genome evolution. Trichomonas vaginalis is an excellent model system for transposon study since its genome (~160 Mb) has been sequenced and is composed of ~65% transposons and other repetitive elements. In this study, we primarily report the identification of Kolobok-type transposons (termed tvBac) in T. vaginalis and the results of transposase sequence analysis. We categorized 24 novel subfamilies of the Kolobok element, including one autonomous subfamily and 23 non-autonomous subfamilies. We also identified a novel H2CH motif in tvBac transposases based on multiple sequence alignment. In addition, we supposed that tvBac and Mutator transposons may have evolved independently from a common ancestor according to our phylogenetic analysis. Our results provide basic information for the understanding of the function and evolution of tvBac transposons in particular and other related transposon families in general.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China.
authors.forename: Qingshu
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.forename: Kaifu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Lina
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Songnian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001483:Base Sequence; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D019895:Transposases / Q000235:genetics*; D014246:Trichomonas vaginalis / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D019895:Transposases