Circe is a transposable element recently identified in Drosophila melanogaster which appears to be mostly associated with the constitutive heterochromatin. This element shows the structural features of a long terminal repeat (LTR)containing retrotransposon: It is flanked by 240-bp-long terminal repeats, and its two open reading frames encode putative proteins resembling the gag and pol polyproteins of retroviruses. However, Circe displays striking similarities to both LOA and Ulysses, a non-LTR element and an LTR element, respectively. The result of its phylogenetic and structural analysis has allowed us to propose a new mechanism for non-LTR retrotransposon evolution.
CITATION STYLE
Losada, A., Abad, J. P., Agudo, M., & Villasante, A. (1999). The analysis of circe, an LTR retrotransposon of Drosophila melanogaster, suggests that an insertion of non-LTR retrotransposons into LTR elements can create chimeric retroelements. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 16(10), 1341–1346. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a026044
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