Jm. Cook et al., Systematic screening of Anopheles mosquito genomes yields evidence for a major clade of Pao-like retrotransposons, INSEC MOL B, 9(1), 2000, pp. 109-117
We developed a degenerate PCR procedure to simultaneously amplify products
from divergent retrotransposon families within the genomes of Anopheles mos
quitoes. The procedure required cloning of multiple PCR products, but more
than half of the clones subsequently sequenced were of retrotransposon orig
in. These included Copia-like and LINE retrotransposons, as well as the fir
st Gypsy-like retrotransposons reported from mosquitoes. Furthermore, some
Anopheles retrotransposon sequences showed similarity to the divergent Pao
element from the silkmoth Bombyx mori. Phylogenetic analyses provided consi
stently strong bootstrap support (> 95%) for a major clade of Pao-like retr
otransposons, which includes five mosquito sequences and the recently disco
vered Drosophila retrotransposons BEL and ninja. This appears to represent
a new family of Pao-like LTR-retrotransposons distinct from the Copia and G
ypsy families.