Britten R J
Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Corona del Mar, 92625.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1995 Jan 17;92(2):599-601. doi: 10.1073/pnas.92.2.599.
A gypsy/Ty3-class retrotransposon (Cer1) is integrated in the DNA of Caenorhabditis elegans chromosome III. It is 8865 nt in length and has 492-nt long terminal repeats that are identical in DNA sequence. There is an exceptionally long (6819 nt) open reading frame uninterrupted by frame-shift mutations in the period since the insertion, which must therefore have been rather recent. Alignment with other gypsy-class elements and with retroviruses indicates that an env gene occupies the 3' 1.2 kb of the open reading frame. A search through GenBank has uncovered two additional gypsy-class elements from C. elegans that are very closely related in DNA sequence to this insert and are transcribed. Since gypsy of Drosophila has been shown to be an infectious element, it is possible that retrovirus-like gypsy elements are active in C. elegans.
一种吉普赛/Ty3类逆转座子(Cer1)整合在秀丽隐杆线虫Ⅲ号染色体的DNA中。它长度为8865个核苷酸,具有492个核苷酸长的末端重复序列,其DNA序列相同。自插入以来,存在一个异常长(6819个核苷酸)的开放阅读框,未被移码突变打断,因此插入必定是相当近期发生的。与其他吉普赛类元件及逆转录病毒的比对表明,env基因占据开放阅读框3'端的1.2 kb区域。在GenBank中进行搜索后发现,秀丽隐杆线虫还有另外两个吉普赛类元件,其DNA序列与该插入片段非常密切相关且可转录。由于果蝇的吉普赛元件已被证明是一种感染性元件,所以逆转录病毒样的吉普赛元件有可能在秀丽隐杆线虫中具有活性。