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Eukaryotic Cell, February 2002, p. 44-55, Vol. 1, No. 1
1535-9778/02/$04.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/EC.01.1.44-55.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

A Long Terminal Repeat Retrotransposon of Fission Yeast Has Strong Preferences for Specific Sites of Insertion

*** Teresa L. Singleton1 and Henry L. Levin2*

Department of Biological Sciences, Delaware State University, Dover, Delaware 19901,1 Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Development, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 208922

Received 26 September 2001/ Accepted 9 November 2001

The successful dispersal of transposons depends on the critical balance between the fitness of the host and the ability of the transposon to insert into the host genome. One method transposons may use to avoid the disruption of coding sequences is to target integration into safe havens. We explored the interaction between the long terminal repeat retrotransposon Tf1 and the genome of the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Using techniques that were specifically designed to detect integration of Tf1 throughout the genome and to avoid bias in this detection, we generated 51 insertion events. Although 60.2% of the genome of S. pombe is coding sequence, all but one of the insertions occurred in intergenic regions. We also found that Tf1 was significantly more likely to insert into intergenic regions that included polymerase II promoters than into regions between convergent gene pairs. Interestingly, 8 of the 51 insertion sites were isolated multiple times from genetically independent cultures. This result suggests that specific sites in intergenic regions are targeted by Tf1. Perhaps the most surprising observation was that per kilobase of nonrepetitive sequence, Tf1 was significantly more likely to insert into chromosome 3 than into one of the other two chromosomes. This preference was found not to be due to differences in the distribution or composition of intergenic sequences within the three chromosomes.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Development, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892. Phone: (301) 402-4281. Fax: (301) 496-4491. E-mail: Henry_Levin{at}nih.gov.

Eukaryotic Cell, February 2002, p. 44-55, Vol. 1, No. 1
1535-9778/02/$04.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/EC.01.1.44-55.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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