IDENTIFICATION OF TNR3, A SUPPRESSOR-MUTATOR ENHANCER-LIKE TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENT FROM RICE

We isolated members of the retroposon family p-SINE1 in rice and found that one member contained an insertion. A 3-bp sequence at the insert ion site within p-SINE1 appeared duplicated. The insertion sequence, 1 536 bp in length, carried imperfect inverted repeats of about 13 bp at its termini which begin with 5'-CACTA--- -3'; these repeats are simil ar to those found in members of the En/Spm transposable element family . These results indicate that the insertion sequence is a transposable element belonging to the En/Spm family and is thus named Tnr3 (transp osable element in rice no. 3). In fact, Tnr3 carried long subterminal regions containing direct and inverted repeats of short DNA sequences of 15 bp, another characteristic of the En/Spm family. The subterminal repeat sequences in Tnr3 are, however, of two kinds, although they sh are homology with each other. Tnr3 and its relatives were present in m ultiple copies in rice. Considering the length of Tnr3, it cannot repr esent an autonomous type element, but is a non-autonomous element prob ably derived by deletion from an autonomous transposon.