Fusion of reverse-oriented Ds termini following abortive transposition in Arabidopsis: implications for the mechanism of Ac/Ds transposition.

We studied the products of alternative transposition reactions that utilize reverse-oriented Ds termini as substrates. In this configuration, Ds transposition can generate genome rearrangements including deletions, inversions, and reciprocal translocations. In approximately half of the transposition products recovered in Arabidopsis, the termini of the reversed ends Ds element were ligated together. The sequences at these fused-end junctions suggest that the excised transposon termini form covalently closed hairpin structures. These results shed new light on the mechanism of Ac/Ds transposition.