title: Tos17 rice element: incomplete but effective.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Tos17 was the first LTR retrotransposon (Copia) described as active in cultivated rice, and is present in two copies in the genome of the sequenced Nipponbare variety. Only the chromosome 7 copy is active and able to retrotranspose, at least during in vitro culture, and this ability was widely used in insertional mutagenesis assays.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Here the structure of the active Tos17 was thoroughly annotated using a set of bioinformatic analyses.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Unexpectedly, Tos17 appears to be a non-autonomous LTR retrotransposon, lacking the gag sequence and thus unable to transpose by itself.
authors.affiliation: UMR DIADE IRD/UM2, 911 Avenue Agropolis BP64503, F-34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. francois.sabot@ird.fr.
authors.forename: Francois
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sabot