TY - JOUR
T1 - Independent and parallel lateral transfer of DNA transposons in tetrapod genomes
AU - Novick, Peter
AU - Smith, Jeremy
AU - Ray, David
AU - Boissinot, Stéphane
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by PSC-CUNY grant 61542-00-39 to Stéphane Boissinot. We would like to thank Dr. Peter Reddien (MIT), Dr. Michael Steiper (Hunter College), Dr. Mark Batzer (Louisiana State University) and Doug Dellecave from D&J's Reptiles for their tissue or DNA contributions. Molecular experiments were conducted in part with equipment from the Core Facility for Imaging, Cellular and Molecular Biology at Queens College.
PY - 2010/1/1
Y1 - 2010/1/1
N2 - In animals, the mode of transmission of transposable elements is generally vertical. However, recent studies have suggested that lateral transfer has occurred repeatedly in several distantly related tetrapod lineages, including mammals. Using transposons extracted from the genome of the lizard Anolis carolinensis as probes, we identified four novel families of hAT transposons that share extremely high similarity with elements in other genomes including several mammalian lineages (primates, chiropters, marsupials), one amphibian and one flatworm, the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea. The discontinuous phylogenetic distribution of these hAT families, coupled with very low synonymous divergence between species, strongly suggests that these elements were laterally transferred to these different species. This indicates that the horizontal transfer of DNA transposons in vertebrates might be more common than previously thought. Yet, it appears that the transfer of DNA transposons did not occur randomly as the same genomes have been invaded independently by different, unrelated transposon families whereas others seem to be immune to lateral transfer. This suggests that some organisms might be intrinsically more vulnerable to DNA transposon lateral transfer, possibly because of a weakened defense against transposons or because they have developed mechanisms to tolerate their impact.
AB - In animals, the mode of transmission of transposable elements is generally vertical. However, recent studies have suggested that lateral transfer has occurred repeatedly in several distantly related tetrapod lineages, including mammals. Using transposons extracted from the genome of the lizard Anolis carolinensis as probes, we identified four novel families of hAT transposons that share extremely high similarity with elements in other genomes including several mammalian lineages (primates, chiropters, marsupials), one amphibian and one flatworm, the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea. The discontinuous phylogenetic distribution of these hAT families, coupled with very low synonymous divergence between species, strongly suggests that these elements were laterally transferred to these different species. This indicates that the horizontal transfer of DNA transposons in vertebrates might be more common than previously thought. Yet, it appears that the transfer of DNA transposons did not occur randomly as the same genomes have been invaded independently by different, unrelated transposon families whereas others seem to be immune to lateral transfer. This suggests that some organisms might be intrinsically more vulnerable to DNA transposon lateral transfer, possibly because of a weakened defense against transposons or because they have developed mechanisms to tolerate their impact.
KW - Horizontal transfer
KW - Lateral transfer
KW - Transposable element
KW - Transposase
KW - Transposon
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U2 - 10.1016/j.gene.2009.08.017
DO - 10.1016/j.gene.2009.08.017
M3 - Article
C2 - 19747963
AN - SCOPUS:70350411861
SN - 0378-1119
VL - 449
SP - 85
EP - 94
JO - Gene
JF - Gene
IS - 1-2
ER -