Conserved features of TBE1 transposons in ciliated protozoa

Abstract

The complete sequences of four TBE1 transposons from Oxytricha fallax and O. trifallax are presented and analyzed. Although two TBE1s are 98% identical to each other at the nucleotide level, the remaining two TBE1s are only 90% identical both to each other and to the other two. This large evolutionary divergence allows us to identify conserved TBE1 features. TBE1 transposons are 4.1 kbp long and are flanked by 3 bp target-site repeats. The elements consist of 78 bp inverted terminal repeats, of which the 17 terminal base pairs are Oxytricha telomere repeats; a central conserved section of 550 bp that includes a set of nested direct and inverted sequence repeats; and 3 open reading frames conserved for encoded amino acid sequence. The three open reading frames encode a 22 kDa basic protein of unknown function, a 42 kDa ‘D,D35E’ transposase, and a 57 kDa chimeric C ₂ H ₂ zinc finger/protein kinase. The protein kinase domain of the 57 kDa protein is unusual, lacking a conserved ATP-binding motif.