TheHermes element fromMusca domestica can transpose in four families of cyclorrhaphan flies

Abstract

Transgenic insect technology will provide opportunities to explore the basic biology of a broad range of insect species in ways that will prove insightful and important. It is also a technology that will provide opportunities to manipulate the genotypes of insects of practical significance to the health and welfare of humans. The Hermes transposable element from the housefly, Musca domestica, is a short inverted repeat-type element related to hobo from Drosophila melanogaster, Ac from Zea mays, and Tam3 from Antirrhinum majus. It has potential to become a versatile and efficient broad host-range insect transformation vector. The ability of Hermes to transpose when introduced into five species of diptera from four divergent families was tested using an in vivo, interplasmid transpositional recombination assay. Hermes was capable of transposing in all species tested, demonstrating that Hermes has a broad host-range. In addition, the rates of transposition were sufficiently high in all species tested to suggest that Hermes will be an efficient gene transfer vector in a wide range of insect species. The Hermes element also revealed a pattern of integration into the target substrate that permitted factors determining integration site selection to be identified. Primary nucleotide sequence of the integration site played a role as did proximity to preferred integration sites and the nucleosomal organization of the target.

An Active Transposable Element, Herves, From the African Malaria Mosquito Anopheles gambiaeSequence data from this article have been deposited with the EMBL/GenBank Data Libraries under accession no. AY462096.

“…This list of potential heat shock the embryos were allowed to recover at 26Њ at elements was sorted further by isolating stretches in which the which time plasmids were recovered. Plasmid recovery was as same ITR was found adjacent to at least two different 8-bp duplidescribed (Sarkar et al 1997). cations.…”

“…Transposition rates are highest in Drosophila embryos but are ‫-03ف‬fold less than those seen with the et al (2001), Herves, like hobo, contained five (blocks A-E). Second, Herves ITRs were consistent with a prorelated Hermes element in similar assays performed in the Canton-S,w strain (Sarkar et al 1997). Nevertheless, posed consensus sequence of hAT ITRs (Warren et al 1995).…”

Phylogenetic and Functional Characterization of the hAT Transposon Superfamily

“…Previous analyses of hAT transposon phylogeny focused only on transposons within what we now define as the Ac branch of the hAT element superfamily (Kempken and Windhofer 2001;Rubin et al 2001). The members of this branch known to be active are Ac, Tam3, hobo, Hermes, Herves, and Tol2 with all also being active in new host species (Martin et al 1989;Haring et al 1991;O'brochta et al 1994;Sarkar et al 1997a;Kawakamai and Noda 2004;Arensburger et al 2005;Evertts et al 2007) Our data show that members of the Buster family, which include the recently discovered SPIN transposons, are in fact capable of transposition upon introduction to new host species. Our data also illustrate the strong conservation of several domesticated Buster genes within several mammalian species including primates, dogs, horses, and cattle, strongly suggesting an essential, but as yet, unknown function for these genes.…”

“…aegypti and D. melanogaster embryos and in D. melanogaster S2 cells. Interplasmid transposition assays were performed according to previous protocols (Sarkar et al 1997a). Both Buster transposons were capable of accurate cut-and-paste transposition in D. melanogaster and Ae.…”

“…pGDV1: Is a Bacillus subtilus plasmid incapable of replicating in Escherichia coli and used as a target plasmid in plasmid-based transposition assays (Sarkar et al 1997a).…”