Tos17 rice element: incomplete but effective

Francois Sabot (1)

1 UMR DIADE - Diversité, adaptation, développement des plantes

Background Tos17 was the first LTR retrotransposon (Copia) described as active in cultivated rice, and is present in two copies in the genome of the sequenced Nipponbare variety. Only the chromosome 7 copy is active and able to retrotranspose, at least during in vitro culture, and this ability was widely used in insertional mutagenesis assays. Results Here the structure of the active Tos17 was thoroughly annotated using a set of bioinformatic analyses. Conclusions Unexpectedly, Tos17 appears to be a non-autonomous LTR retrotransposon, lacking the gag sequence and thus unable to transpose by itself.

Mots clés: Long Terminal Repeat; Genomic Copy; Primer Binding Site; Long Terminal Repeat Retrotransposon; Insertional Tool

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]; Génomique, Transcriptomique et Protéomique [q-bio.GN]

Francois Sabot. Tos17 rice element: incomplete but effective. Mobile DNA, 2014, 5 (1), pp.10. ⟨10.1186/1759-8753-5-10⟩. ⟨hal-03221033⟩