Transposable in Biological News

After dinosaurs, mammals rise but their genomes get smaller

... for the long terminal repeat (LTR) sequences of transposable elements, a curious sort of "jumping" genetic ... of mammalian and non-mammalian genomes. transposable elements often lose their functionality soon ... common. In the human genome, for example, transposable elements constitute as much as 45 percent of an ...

New research shows how gene function drives natural selection in important class of genetic elements

... function is driving the evolution of one kind of transposable element called the LTR retrotransposon. (LTR ... evolutionary pressures between host genome and transposable element will in the future be of interest to ... been known for a long time that the insertion of transposable elements can harm the host, but few studies have ...

Researchers piggyback to safer reprogrammed stem cells

... into the Epi-stem cells, they turned to a special type of DNA, called a transposable element, which can insert itself into an organism's DNA and carry a cargo with it, in this case Klf4. The transposable element Smith and colleagues used in their study is called Piggybac, which ...

Scientists discover small RNAs that regulate gene expression and protect the genome

... they act as a kind of immune system to suppress genetic interlopers called transposable elements, which were discovered at CSHL by Nobel laureate Barbara ... RNAs. The new small-RNA class both modifies gene activity and suppresses transposable elements, thus serving as a defense mechanism. These findings, the ...

'Junk' DNA proves functional

... called 'transposable elements' that are able to jump from one site to another at certain times in the history of the organism. The families of these transposable elements vary from species to species, as do the distributed DNA segments which bind the regulatory proteins." Dr. White also added, "This ...

Kansas state flower receives scientific attention

... species grow in extreme environments, Ungerer hypothesizes that environmental stress may have caused the activation of a typically inactive class of transposable elements of DNA, called long terminal repeat retrotransposons. "These elements are DNA sequences related to infectious retroviruses and are ...

Common aquatic animals show extreme resistance to radiation

... in high-school biology classes, bdelloid rotifers are highly unusual in several regards: They appear to be exclusively asexual, have relatively few transposable genes, and can survive and reproduce after complete desiccation at any stage of their life cycle. Meselson and Gladyshev hypothesize that it's this ...

Present-day species of piranha result from a marine incursion into the Amazon Basin

... at different spatial and temporal scales, is responsible for the diversification of the piranhas. This is an evolutionary progression which should be transposable to other fish communities inhabiting South American waters. ...

Selfish DNA and the Genetic Control of Vector-Borne Diseases

... of deadly pathogens to merely annoying pests. There are a number of naturally occurring selfish genetic elements. The most familiar of these are transposable elements, often called jumping genes, but more exotic examples include sex ratio distorters, and gamete killers. Each selfish element uses a ...

KGI professor contributes new insights on 'jumping genes'

... professor at the University of Zurich, were reported in the paper Transposon Excision from an Atypical Site: A Mechanism of Evolution of Novel transposable Elements. The work extends theories of the renowned cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock, who originally discovered moveable genetic elements. Rays ...

Fungus genome yielding answers to protect grains, people and animals

... there aren't too many repetitive DNA sequences," Xu said. "It seems that this Fusarium can efficiently detect and remove duplicated sequences or transposable elements, which kept the genome clean and well-organized." This basic information on the Fusarium graminearum genome will aid in further research ...

Exploring the dark matter of the genome

... elements, such as small RNAs that neutralize transposable elements, or transposons -- DNAs similar to ... repeat-rich," says Smith, "and most of it is transposable elements that have been chewed up and fragmented." Susan Celniker emphasizes that transposable elements, of which 96 families have been found in ...

Genome of yellow fever/dengue fever mosquito sequenced

... the United States, Spain, and France to annotate transposable elements (TEs) in the Ae. aegypti genome. TEs are ... uncovered and described more than 1,000 transposable elements, which occupy approximately 50 percent of the entire Ae. aegypti genome. For example, a transposable element named Feilai has more than 50,000 copies ...

Taking 'chips' to the next level of gene hunting

... Boeke and his team have focused particularly on transposable elements, segments of DNA that hop around from ... the middle of it, or cause chromosomes to break. transposable elements long have been suspected of playing a ... genome, which contains hundreds of thousands of transposable elements of which perhaps a few hundred are ...

Sunflower speciation highlights roles for transposable elements in evolution

... proliferation of genetic entities known as transposable elements. The findings are reported by Mark ... are associated with a massive proliferation of transposable genetic elements that has occurred independently in the genome of each hybrid species. transposable elements, made famous by Barbara McClintock in ...

Where 'jumping genes' fear to tread

... tracks of genomic segments (greater than 10 kilobases in length) that lack transposable elements. His team identified 860 such sequences in humans, 993 in mice, ... in the analysis because it is a marsupial that has a similar load of transposable elements compared to mice and humans but is evolutionarily distant from ...

Does evolution select for faster evolvers?

... Rice University scientists suggest a possible answer; the speed of evolution has increased over time because bacteria and viruses constantly exchange transposable chunks of DNA between species, thus making it possible for life forms to evolve faster than they would if they relied only on sexual selection or ...

Looking to a new era in bee research

... and Metabolism, Gene Regulation, Genome Analysis, Physical and Genetic Mapping and Chromosome Structure, Population Genetics, Repeated Sequences and transposable Elements. A principal focus was on the complex honey bee social lifestyle and how it differs from other solitary lifestyle insects. This large ...

Pathway toward gene silencing described in plants

... from dwarfing in plants to certain tumors in humans, and death in mice. One role of DNA methylation is to turn off repetitive genes, such as transposable elements that can move or spread throughout a genome and disrupt other gene functions if left unchecked. There is also interest in DNA methylation ...

'Jumping genes' contribute to the uniqueness of individual brains

... in vivo and couldn't be dismissed as a tissue culture artifact." transposable L1 elements, or "jumping genes" as they are often called, make up 17 ... paste" mechanism. Long dismissed as useless gibberish or "junk" DNA, the transposable L1 elements were thought to be intracellular parasites or leftovers from ...

$6.5 Million Grant for Microarray Center at Yale School of Medicine

... University. Says Vollbrecht, "We solved this enduring puzzle by combining classical and modern molecular genetics. The former included our use of transposable elements or 'jumping genes'--discovered at Cold Spring Harbor by [Nobel laureate] Barbara McClintock--to 'tag' the ramosa1 gene. That enabled us to ...

The genetic origins of corn on the cob

... University. Says Vollbrecht, "We solved this enduring puzzle by combining classical and modern molecular genetics. The former included our use of transposable elements or 'jumping genes'--discovered at Cold Spring Harbor by [Nobel laureate] Barbara McClintock--to 'tag' the ramosa1 gene. That enabled us to ...

Study reveals candidate targets for anti-retroviral therapeutics

... harbor mobile genetic elements that are non-pathogenic molecular relatives of retroviruses. In budding yeast, these mobile elements (called Ty ?or transposable yeast ?elements) encode proteins that are homologs of retroviral proteins. The proteins encoded by Ty elements and the steps of the life cycle in ...

New tumor-suppressor gene discovered

... leg, and antenna. He also generated another mutant form of the mats gene--this time with a huge missing pie ce of genetic material caused by another transposable element jumping out and dragging lots of material along with it. "With such a deletion of material, this gene is basically gone, so we knew it ...

Researchers uncover sequence of major rice pathogen

... upregulated during the early stages of infection-related development. The M. grisea genome has been subject to invasion and proliferation of active transposable elements, reflecting the clonal nature of this fungus imposed by widespread rice cultivation. ...