Saigo K, Kugimiya W, Matsuo Y, Inouye S, Yoshioka K, Yuki S
Nature. 1984;312(5995):659-61. doi: 10.1038/312659a0.
The largest group of transposable elements in Drosophila melanogaster, copia-like elements, share some important structural features with and are intimately related in evolution to vertebrate retroviruses. To further clarify the relationship between retroviruses and copia-like transposable elements, we set out to determine the complete nucleotide sequence of the genome of 17.6, which has long terminal repeats homologous in nucleotide sequence to those of avian leukaemia-sarcoma virus. We report here that 17.6 contains three long open reading frames comparable with gag, pol and env genes in retrovirus. At the level of amino acid sequence, the longest open reading frame of 17.6 includes a coding sequence similar to that for reverse transcriptase, suggesting a role for this enzyme in the life cycle of some Drosophila copia-like elements, analogous to the situation in retrovirus.
果蝇中最大的一类转座元件，即类copia元件，与脊椎动物逆转录病毒具有一些重要的结构特征，并且在进化上密切相关。为了进一步阐明逆转录病毒与类copia转座元件之间的关系，我们着手确定17.6基因组的完整核苷酸序列，该序列具有与禽白血病-肉瘤病毒核苷酸序列同源的长末端重复序列。我们在此报告，17.6包含三个长开放阅读框，与逆转录病毒中的gag、pol和env基因相当。在氨基酸序列水平上，17.6最长的开放阅读框包含一个与逆转录酶编码序列相似的编码序列，这表明该酶在某些果蝇类copia元件的生命周期中发挥作用，类似于逆转录病毒中的情况。
