Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Viruses 9 (2017): 78, doi:10.3390/v9040078.
Description:
Rotifers of the class Bdelloidea, microscopic freshwater invertebrates, possess a highlydiversified repertoire of transposon families, which, however, occupy less than 4% of genomic DNA in the sequenced representative Adineta vaga. We performed a comprehensive analysis of A. vaga retroelements, and found that bdelloid long terminal repeat (LTR)retrotransposons, in addition to conserved open reading frame (ORF) 1 and ORF2 corresponding to gag and pol genes, code for an unusually high variety of ORF3 sequences. Retrovirus-like LTR families in A. vaga belong to four major lineages, three of which are rotiferspecific and encode a dUTPase domain. However only one lineage contains a canonical envlike fusion glycoprotein acquired from paramyxoviruses (non-segmented negative-strand RNA viruses), although smaller ORFs with transmembrane domains may perform similar roles. A different ORF3 type encodes a GDSL esterase/lipase, which was previously identified as ORF1 in several clades of non-LTR retrotransposons, and implicated in membrane targeting. Yet another ORF3 type appears in unrelated LTR-retrotransposon lineages, and displays strong homology to DEDDy-type exonucleases involved in 3′-end processing of RNA and single-stranded DNA. Unexpectedly, each of the enzymatic ORF3s is also associated with different subsets of Penelope-like Athena retroelement families. The unusual association of the same ORF types with retroelements from different classes reflects their modular structure with a high degree of flexibility, and points to gene sharing between different groups of retroelements.
Description:
This work was
supported by the National Institutes of Health grant GM111917 to I.A.; A.K. was supported by the Research
Experiences for Undergraduates supplement to the National Science Foundation grant MCB-1121334 to I.A.
Keywords:
Retrovirus-like transposable elements
;
Envelope gene (ENV)
;
DEDDy exonuclease
;
DEDDy exonuclease
;
dUTPase
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
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