Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on July 27, 2008.

Genetics, Vol. 179, 2291-2297, August 2008, Copyright © 2008
doi:10.1534/genetics.108.089995

A Recently Active Miniature Inverted-Repeat Transposable Element, Chunjie, Inserted Into an Operon Without Disturbing the Operon Structure in Geobacter uraniireducens Rf4

* Computational Systems Biology Laboratory, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, {dagger} School of Mathematics and System Sciences, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, Shandong, People's Republic of China and {ddagger} School of Sciences, Jinan University, Jinan 250022, Shandong, People's Republic of China

2 Corresponding author: Computational Systems Biology Laboratory, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Georgia, 120 Green St., Athens, GA 30602.
E-mail: xyn{at}bmb.uga.edu

Miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs) are short DNA transposons with terminal inverted repeat (TIR) signals and have been extensively studied in plants and other eukaryotes. But little is known about them in eubacteria. We identified a novel and recently active MITE, Chunjie, when studying the recent duplication of an operon consisting of ABC transporters and a phosphate uptake regulator in the chromosome of Geobacter uraniireducens Rf4. Chunjie resembles the other known MITEs in many aspects, e.g., having TIR signals and direct repeats, small in size, noncoding, able to fold into a stable secondary structure, and typically inserted into A + T-rich regions. At least one case of recent transposition was observed, i.e., the insertion of Chunjie into one copy of the aforementioned operon. As far as we know, this is the first report that the insertion of a MITE does not disrupt the operon structure.




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