title: iMITEdb: the genome-wide landscape of miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements in insects.
abstract: Miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs) have attracted much attention due to their widespread occurrence and high copy numbers in eukaryotic genomes. However, the systematic knowledge about MITEs in insects and other animals is still lacking. In this study, we identified 6012 MITE families from 98 insect species genomes. Comparison of these MITEs with known MITEs in the NCBI non-redundant database and Repbase showed that 5701(∼95%) of 6012 MITE families are novel. The abundance of MITEs varies drastically among different insect species, and significantly correlates with genome size. In general, larger genomes contain more MITEs than small genomes. Furthermore, all identified MITEs were included in a newly constructed database (iMITEdb) (http://gene.cqu.edu.cn/iMITEdb/), which has functions such as browse, search, BLAST and download. Overall, our results not only provide insight on insect MITEs but will also improve assembly and annotation of insect genomes. More importantly, the results presented in this study will promote studies of MITEs function, evolution and application in insects. DATABASE URL: http://gene.cqu.edu.cn/iMITEdb/.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology, Key Laboratory for Sericulture Functional Genomics and Biotechnology of Agricultural Ministry, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Min-Jin
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Evolutionary and Functional Genomics, School of Life Sciences, Chongqing University, Chongqing 401331, China.
authors.forename: Qiu-Zhong
authors.initials: QZ
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy and Life Science, Jiujiang University, Jiujiang 332000, China.
authors.forename: Hua-Hao
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology, Key Laboratory for Sericulture Functional Genomics and Biotechnology of Agricultural Ministry, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoling
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tong
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology, Key Laboratory for Sericulture Functional Genomics and Biotechnology of Agricultural Ministry, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Evolutionary and Functional Genomics, School of Life Sciences, Chongqing University, Chongqing 401331, China.
authors.forename: Ze
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology, Key Laboratory for Sericulture Functional Genomics and Biotechnology of Agricultural Ministry, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China fydai@swu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Fangyin
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Dai
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D049750:Genome, Insect; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D007313:Insecta / Q000235:genetics*; D055029:Inverted Repeat Sequences
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements