Transposons and genome evolution in plants

Abstract

Although it is known today that transposons comprise a significant fraction of the genomes of many organisms, they eluded discovery through the first half century of genetic analysis and even once discovered, their ubiquity and abundance were not recognized for some time. This genetic invisibility of transposons focuses attention on the mechanisms that control not only transposition, but illegitimate recombination. The thesis is developed that the mechanisms that control transposition are a reflection of the more general capacity of eukaryotic organisms to detect, mark, and retain duplicated DNA through repressive chromatin structures.

A transcriptome-based genetic map of Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) and identification of regions of segmental homology with peach (Prunus persica)

“…Syntenic regions in Castanea may have undergone a general expansion relative to Prunus, possibly due to the acquisition and accumulation of repetitive DNA elements such as long terminal repeat retrotransposons. Accumulation of retrotransposon blocks between genes can play a significant role in genome evolution (Fedoroff 2000). In addition, they likely contribute to the larger sizes of syntenic genomic blocks observed in chestnut compared to peach.…”

Isolation, characterization and amplification of simple sequence repeat loci in coffee

“…The common presence of transposable elements in plant and animal genes indicates that these repetitive elements may play a central role in gene and genome evolution (Bureau et al 1996). Evidence that transposable elements play a central role in evolutionary restructuring of genomes has grown for every organism with a reasonable amount of collected data (Fedoroff et al 2000).…”

Structural architecture of genome of corn

“…DNA-transposons are detected in maize genome considerably less often than retrotransposons [13]. Only about 2% repeats are represented by DNA-transposons.…”