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Article
Transposition of Reversed Ac Element Ends Generates Novel Chimeric Genes in Maize
PLoS Genetics
  • Jianbo Zhang, Iowa State University
  • Feng Zhang, University of Georgia
  • Thomas Peterson, Iowa State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
10-1-2006
DOI
10.1371/journal.pgen.0020164
Abstract
The maize Activator/Dissociation (Ac/Ds) elements are members of the hAT (hobo, Ac, and Tam3) superfamily of type II (DNA) transposons that transpose through a “cut-and-paste” mechanism. Previously, we reported that a pair of Ac ends in reversed orientation is capable of undergoing alternative transposition reactions that can generate large-scale chromosomal rearrangements, including deletions and inversions. We show here that rearrangements induced by reversed Ac ends transposition can join the coding and regulatory sequences of two linked paralogous genes to generate a series of chimeric genes, some of which are functional. To our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating that alternative transposition reactions can recombine gene segments, leading to the creation of new genes.
Comments

This article is from PLoS Genetics 2 (2006): e164, doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.0020164. Posted with permission.

Rights
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Copyright Owner
Zhang et al
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Jianbo Zhang, Feng Zhang and Thomas Peterson. "Transposition of Reversed Ac Element Ends Generates Novel Chimeric Genes in Maize" PLoS Genetics Vol. 2 Iss. 10 (2006) p. e164
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/thomas-peterson/16/