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

Reference ID

14043

Title

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

Source

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007, vol. 104, pp. 10962-10967

Authors (4)

Yang-G	Zhang-F
Hancock-C-N	Wessler-S-R

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.