Abstract
We report that two structurally similar transposable elements containing reverse transcriptase (RT), Penelope in Drosophila virilis and Athena in bdelloid rotifers, have proliferated as copies containing introns. The ability of Penelope-like elements (PLEs) to retain introns, their separate phylogenetic placement and their peculiar structural features make them a novel class of eukaryotic retroelements.
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Acknowledgements
We thank M. Cummings and D. Mark Welch for comments. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (M.M.), the Wellcome Trust and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (M.B.E.).
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Arkhipova, I., Pyatkov, K., Meselson, M. et al. Retroelements containing introns in diverse invertebrate taxa. Nat Genet 33, 123–124 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1074
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1074
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