Horizontal transfer of OC1 transposons in the Tasmanian devil

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Sarah Schaack¹  Cedric Feschotte²  Paul Waters³  Clement Gilbert⁴ 

[1] Department of Biology, Reed College, Portland, OR, USA;Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT, USA;Evolution Ecology and Genetics, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia;School of Biotechnology & Biomolecular Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia;Université de Poitiers, UMR CNRS 7267, Ecologie et Biologie des Interactions, Equipe Ecologie Evolution Symbiose, Poitiers, France;

关键词: Horizontal transfer;    Transposable element;    Tasmanian devil;    Sarcophilus harrisii;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-14-134

 received in 2012-09-21, accepted in 2013-01-18,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThere is growing recognition that horizontal DNA transfer, a process known to be common in prokaryotes, is also a significant source of genomic variation in eukaryotes. Horizontal transfer of transposable elements (HTT) may be especially prevalent in eukaryotes given the inherent mobility, widespread occurrence, and prolific abundance of these elements in many eukaryotic genomes.ResultsHere, we provide evidence for a new case of HTT of the transposon family OposCharlie1 (OC1) in the Tasmanian devil, Sarcophilus harrisii. Bioinformatic analyses of OC1 sequences in the Tasmanian devil genome suggest that this transposon infiltrated the common ancestor of the Dasyuridae family ~17 million years ago. This estimate is corroborated by a PCR-based screen for the presence/absence of this family in Tasmanian devils and closely-related species.ConclusionsThis case of HTT is the first to be reported in dasyurids. It brings the number of animal lineages independently invaded by OC1 to 12, and adds a fourth continent to the pandemic-like pattern of invasion of this transposon. In the context of these data, we discuss the evolutionary history of this transposon family and its potential impact on the diversification of marsupials.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Gilbert et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.