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

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgments

Arabidopsis (NoO) seeds with rbcS:Ac-1017-3 was obtained from Candace Waddell. We thank Yuanbin Ru for his assistance with searching the maize genome database for fused Ds ends sequence. Lisa Coffey, Tanya Rogers, Nicole Schneider, Peter Howe, Avni Sanghi and Michelle Blessington assisted with various aspects of this study. This research was supported by NSF Award 0110170 to T.P. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. Lakshminarasimhan Krishnaswamy

    Present address: Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, 117, Tucker Hall, Columbia, MO, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, Iowa State University, 2208, Molecular Biology Building, Ames, IA, 50011-3260, USA

    Lakshminarasimhan Krishnaswamy, Jianbo Zhang & Thomas Peterson

  2. Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, 50011, IA, USA

    Thomas Peterson

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  1. Lakshminarasimhan Krishnaswamy
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  2. Jianbo Zhang
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  3. Thomas Peterson
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Correspondence to Thomas Peterson.

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Communicated by R. Schmidt.

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Krishnaswamy, L., Zhang, J. & Peterson, T. Fusion of reverse-oriented Ds termini following abortive transposition in Arabidopsis: implications for the mechanism of Ac/Ds transposition. Plant Cell Rep 29, 413–417 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-010-0832-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-010-0832-x

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