Horizontal Escape of the Novel Tc1-Like Lepidopteran Transposon TCp3.2 into Cydia pomonella Granulovirus |
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Authors: | Johannes A Jehle Antje Nickel Just M Vlak Horst Backhaus |
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Institution: | (1) Institut für Biochemie und Pflanzenvirologie, Biologische Bundesanstalt für Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Messeweg 11–12,38104 Braunschweig, Germany, DE;(2) Department of Virology, Agricultural University Wageningen, P.O.B. 8045, 6700 EM Wageningen, The Netherlands, NL |
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Abstract: | We characterized an insertion mutant of the baculovirus Cydia pomonella granulovirus (CpGV), which contained a transposable element of 3.2 kb. This transposon, termed TCp3.2, has unusually long
inverted terminal repeats (ITRs) of 756 bp and encodes a defective gene for a putative transposase. Amino acid sequence comparison
of the defective transposase gene revealed a distant relationship to a putative transposon in Caenorhabditis elegans which also shares some similarity of the ITRs. Maximum parsimony analysis of the predicted amino acid sequences of Tc1- and
mariner-like transposases available from the GenBank data base grouped TCp3.2 within the superfamily of Tc1-like transposons.
DNA hybridization indicated that TCp3.2 originated from the genome of Cydia pomonella, which is the natural host of CpGV, and is present in less than 10 copies in the C. pomonella genome. The transposon TCp3.2 most likely was inserted into the viral genome during infection of host larvae. TCp3.2 and
the recently characterized Tc1-like transposon TC14.7 (Jehle et al. 1995), which was also found in a CpGV mutant, represent
a new family of transposons found in baculovirus genomes. The occasional horizontal escape of different types of host transposons
into baculovirus genomes evokes the question about the possible role of baculoviruses as an interspecies vector in the horizontal
transmission of insect transposons.
Received: 27 February 1997 / Accepted: 16 May 1997 |
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Keywords: | :Cydia pomonella granulovirus — Baculovirus — Insect transposons — Tc1 |
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