Transposition of the rice miniature inverted repeat transposable element mPing in Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

An active miniature inverted repeat transposable element (MITE), mPing, was discovered by computer-assisted analysis of rice genome sequence. The mPing element is mobile in rice cell culture and in a few rice strains where it has been amplified to >1,000 copies during recent domestication. However, determination of the transposase source and characterization of the mechanism of transposition have been hampered by the high copy number of mPing and the presence of several candidate autonomous elements in the rice genome. Here, we report that mPing is active in Arabidopsis thaliana, where its transposition is catalyzed by three sources of transposase from rice: the autonomous Ping and Pong elements and by a cDNA derived from a Ping transcript. In addition to transposase, the product of a second element-encoded ORF of unknown function is also required for mPing transposition. Excision of mPing in A. thaliana is usually precise, and transposed copies usually insert into unlinked sites in the genome that are preferentially in or near genes. As such, this will be a valuable assay system for the dissection of MITE transposition and a potentially powerful tagging system for gene discovery in eukaryotes.autonomous element ͉ PIF/Harbinger ͉ transgenic

Transposition of a reconstructed Harbinger element in human cells and functional homology with two transposon-derived cellular genes

“…2B). This finding is consistent with excision of mPing in Arabidopsis, where the vast majority of excision sites were found to contain only the TTA target site (11).…”

“…Based on the presence of a SANT/Myb/trihelix domain (Fig. 1C) (4, 7), the Myb-like protein has been proposed to bind to the transposon DNA, where it either acts as a transcription factor of the transposase gene (9) and/or serves as a platform for transposase binding (11). Indeed, in contrast to the transposase, the Myb-like protein binds to six sites within the Harbinger3N DR transposon through its N-terminal trihelix domain (Fig.…”

“…1C) and might be involved either in a DNA-binding function similar to that observed in Myb-related transcriptional regulators (Myb-like domain) or in protein-protein interactions as described for chromatin remodeling factors (SANTlike domain) (10). Both genes encoded by Ping and Pong elements were recently found to be required for mPing transposition (11).…”

Genome-Wide Analysis of the Fusarium oxysporum mimp Family of MITEs and Mobilization of Both Native and De Novo Created mimps

“…Similarity searches based on TIR sequences have allowed the identification of autonomous class II elements, potentially responsible for the mobilization of MITEs (Feschotte and Mouches 2000;Feschotte et al 2003;Jiang et al 2003;Kikuchi et al 2003;Macas et al 2005;Saito et al 2005;Quesneville et al 2006). However, only a few recent studies have demonstrated, either by in vitro biochemical approaches (Loot et al 2006;Feschotte et al 2005) or in vivo (Yang et al 2007;Dufresne et al 2007), that class II transposases do have the potential to mobilize MITEs.…”

Miniature Inverted-Repeat Transposable Elements ofStowawayAre Active in Potato

“…1 glume phenotype to wild type (Nakazaki et al 2003). The identification of an active element made it possible to discover that the transposable elements Ping and Pong supplied the transposase acting on mPing (Yang et al 2007). Movement of Stowaway MITEs in rice was also reported recently.…”