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Retrotransposition of a bacterial group II intron

Nature volume 404, pages 1018–1021 (2000)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 01 November 2001

Abstract

Self-splicing group II introns may be the evolutionary progenitors of eukaryotic spliceosomal introns1,2,3,4,5,6,7, but the route by which they invade new chromosomal sites is unknown. To address the mechanism by which group II introns are disseminated, we have studied the bacterial Ll.LtrB intron from Lactococcus lactis8. The protein product of this intron, LtrA, possesses maturase, reverse transcriptase and endonuclease enzymatic activities9,10,11. Together with the intron, LtrA forms a ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex which mediates a process known as retrohoming11. In retrohoming, the intron reverse splices into a cognate intronless DNA site. Integration of a DNA copy of the intron is recombinase independent but requires all three activities of LtrA11. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of a group II intron invading ectopic chromosomal sites, which occurs by a distinct retrotransposition mechanism. This retrotransposition process is endonuclease-independent and recombinase-dependent, and is likely to involve reverse splicing of the intron RNA into cellular RNA targets. These retrotranspositions suggest a mechanism by which splicesomal introns may have become widely dispersed.

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Figure 1: Retrohoming and retrotransposition in L. lactis.
Figure 2: Ectopic insertions of Ll.LtrB in the L. lactis chromosome.
Figure 3: Splicing of Ll.LtrB at ectopic sites.
Figure 4: Mobility pathways.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. San Filippo and A. Lambowitz for providing the LtrA Endo- YRT mutant. We also thank D. Manias and G. Dunny for help in constructing pLEtd+KR″; D. Ehrlich and A. Sorokin for information based on the L. lactis DNA sequence; J. Curcio, K. Derbyshire, V. Derbyshire, S. Hanes, A. Lambowitz, R. Lease, R. Morse, D. Nag and M. Parker for comments on the manuscript; N. J. Schisler and J. Palmer for estimates of intron composition of the human genome; and M. Carl for manuscript preparation. This work was supported by NIH grants to M.B.

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  1. New York State Department of Health, Molecular Genetics Program, Wadsworth Center, and School of Public Health, State University of New York at Albany, PO Box 22002, Albany, 12201-2002, New York, USA

    Benoit Cousineau, Stacey Lawrence, Dorie Smith & Marlene Belfort

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  1. Benoit Cousineau
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Correspondence to Marlene Belfort.

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Cousineau, B., Lawrence, S., Smith, D. et al. Retrotransposition of a bacterial group II intron. Nature 404, 1018–1021 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35010029

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