Molecular reconstruction of a fossilized Stowaway-family transposon Pyong

• Project/Area Number: 26660005
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Science in genetics and breeding
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: Tsukiyama Takuji 京都大学, (連合)農学研究科(研究院), 助教 (00423004)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Project Status: Completed (Fiscal Year 2015)
• Budget Amount: ¥3,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥900,000); Fiscal Year 2015: ¥2,340,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥540,000); Fiscal Year 2014: ¥1,560,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥360,000)
• Keywords: 転移因子 / MITE / イネ / Stowaway

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we tried to reactivate a Stowaway-family transposon Pyong in rice. We found that temperate japonica varieties including Nipponbare had 23 Pyong-like elements on all chromosomes excepting 5 and 10 although they had no Pyong. However, these elements could not be reactivated by DNA demethylation and gamma-irradiation. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that a putative autonomous element Zm-aPyong (Zea mays active Pyong) was present in the maize genome. These findings give us great clues to understand the transposition mechanism of Stowaway-family transposons.