Nucleic acids movement and its relation to genome dynamics of repetitive DNA

Abstract

There is growing evidence of evolutionary genome plasticity. The evolution of repetitive DNA elements, the major components of most eukaryotic genomes, involves the amplification of various classes of mobile genetic elements, the expansion of satellite DNA, the transfer of fragments or entire organellar genomes and may have connections with viruses. In addition to various repetitive DNA elements, a plethora of large and small RNAs migrate within and between cells during individual development as well as during evolution and contribute to changes of genome structure and function.Such migration of DNA and RNA molecules often results in horizontal gene transfer, thus shaping the whole genomic network of interconnected species. Here, we propose that a high evolutionary dynamism of repetitive genome components is often related to the migration/movement of DNA or RNA molecules. We speculate that the cytoplasm is probably an ideal compartment for such evolutionary experiments.

Comparison of the evolutionary patterns of DNA repeats in ancient and young invertebrate species flocks of Lake Baikal

“…There is evidence that highly repeated mobile elements may play a certain role in the regulation of genetic activity (see for example (Rocha et al, 2022)), their distribution must also be taken into account in the epigenetic analysis (Lerat et al, 2019). It is important to note that evidence is accumulating about the important role that repeated mobile elements may play in horizontal gene transfer between phylogenetically distant species (Ahmad et al, 2021;Athanasouli, Rӧdelsperger, 2022;Kejnovsky, Jedlicka, 2022). Dodsworth et al (2015) have shown that a set of repeated elements contains a significant phylogenetic signal.…”