The Queensland fruit fly, Bactrocera tryoni, contains multiple members of the hAT family of transposable elements

Members of the hAT transposable element family are mobile in non-host insec t species and have been used as transformation vectors in some of these spe cies. We report that the Queensland fruit fly, Bactrocera tryoni, contains at least two types of insect hAT elements called Homer and a Homer-like ele ment (HLE), The Homer element is 3789 bp in size and contains 12-bp imperfe ct inverted terminal repeats. The Homer element contains a long open readin g frame (ORF) that encodes a putative transposase. Three different copies o f this long ORF were recovered from the B. tryoni genome and, upon transcri ption and translation in an in vitro system, all produced transposase, The HLE is an incomplete element since no 3' inverted terminal repeat (ITR) was found. Homer and the HLE are as related to one another as either is to the other insect hAT elements such as Hermes, hobo, hermit and hopper, The str ucture and distribution of these two Homer elements is described.