Transposable elements expression in Rhinella marina (cane toad) specimens submitted to immune and stress challenge

Limited stress and tissue-specific transcriptional and translational activity of transposable elements in mosquitoes

“…Although expressed in low abundance in mosquitoes, the number of isoforms generated by TEs is quite variable between species, from ∼1,5% to ∼16% in Anophelinae mosquitoes to almost nearly 55% in both Aedes species. The TE transcripts proportion observed in Anophelinae mosquitoes transcriptome is more similar to the proportion observed in various species from different phyla: Mollusca, Pomacea canaliculata (1.9% of the transcripts) (98); Nematoda, Heterodera avenae (3% of the transcripts) (99); Chordata, Rhinella marina (∼8.2% of transcripts) (100) and Corydoras maculifer (4.68% of transcripts) (101); Basidiomycota, Phakopsora pachyrhizi (1.62% of the transcripts) (96). Although multiple isoforms of TE transcripts are produced, the difference between expression levels and transcript diversity in mosquitoes can also be quite high.…”

“…Despite TE transcripts reconstruction, a question remained open after the initial analysis of expression: do the transcripts originate from intact TE copies, or do they originate from defective TEs? Most of the assembled transcripts represent defective elements, characterized by small and truncated ORFs or with transcripts with no coding potential, similar to vertebrates, where most TE-derived transcripts are truncated (100, 104). Although de novo transcriptome assemblies suffer from incomplete transcripts, we used high-depth runs and genome-guided assembly and obtained high-quality transcriptomes.…”