P-Element-Induced Recombination in Drosophila melanogaster: Hybrid Element Insertion

Abstract

It has previously been shown that the combination of two deleted P elements in trans, one containing the left functional end and the second element the right functional end, can lead to high levels of male recombination. This finding strongly suggests that P-element, ends from different chromosomes can become associated, followed by “pseudo-excision.” We show that two different processes are involved in resolving the pseudo-excision event: (1) the excised P-element ends continue to function as a single unit (Hybrid Element) and insert at a nearby site in the chromosome or into the element itself [Hybrid Element Insertion (HEI)] and (2) free ends that do not contain P elements repair and rejoin [(Hybrid Excision and Repair (HER)]. Both types of resolution can lead to recombination, and this paper concentrates on the HEI class. One type of HEI event predicts the exact reverse complementary duplication of an 8-bp target site, and we have confirmed the existence of such a structure in six independently derived recombinant chromosomes. There is also a high tendency for insertion events to occur within a few bases of the original 8-bp target site, including six apparent cases of insertion into the exact site.

Segmental Duplication, Microinversion, and Gene Loss Associated with a Complex Inversion Breakpoint Region in Drosophila

“…The hybrid element insertion model (Gray et al 1996;Gray 2000;Zhang and Peterson 2004) could explain inversion 2m and its associated duplication also as a single event if the participating BuT5 copies were originally inserted 5# and 3# of CG4673 in homologous chromosomes (supplementary fig. S6 in additional file 1, Supplementary Material online).…”

Transposon-induced inversions activate gene expression in the maize pericarp

“…The maize Ac / Ds system is not the only TE system that can induce inversions and other rearrangements. Like Ac / Ds elements in maize, the P-elements in Drosophila are also known to cause inversions and other chromosomal rearrangements through Alternative Transpositions ( Gray et al 1996 ; Tanaka et al 1997 ). Other examples of such rearrangements via non-standard transposition include impala elements in the fungus Fusarium ( Hua-Van et al 2002 ) and Sleeping Beauty transposons in transgenes of mice ( Geurts et al 2006 ).…”

Demonstration of in vivo engineered tandem duplications of varying sizes using CRISPR and recombinases in Drosophila melanogaster

“…In the wild, tandem duplications originate through a variety of mechanisms involving recombination, replication, and transposition ( Gray et al 1996 ; Ranz et al 2007 ; Carvalho and Lupski 2016 ). Ectopic homologous recombination is a well-described method of duplication, in which a crossover or repair event occurs between nonallelic but otherwise identical sequences ( Carvalho and Lupski 2016 ).…”