Deletions by Reversed <i>Ac</i> Ends Transposition Generate Chimerical Genes

Abstract

<div><p>The solid circle indicates the centromere, the short vertical line indicates the target site, and the other symbols have the same meaning as those in <a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0020164#pgen-0020164-g001" target="_blank">Figure 1</a>. (For animated version, see <a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0020164#pgen-0020164-sv001" target="_blank">Video S1</a>).</p><p>(A) Ac transposase (blue oval) binds to the 5′ end of <i>Ac</i> and 3′ end of <i>fAc</i>.</p><p>(B) As in ordinary transposition, the <i>Ac</i> 5′ end and the <i>fAc</i> 3′ end are excised by transposase cleavage, and the sequences flanking the <i>Ac/fAc</i> ends join together to form a ~13-kb circle. The X mark at the junction indicates the transposon footprint.</p><p>(C) The excised transposon ends insert into a site in intron 2 of <i>p2</i>. The <i>Ac</i> 5′ end joins to the distal side of the insertion site to form a circle, and the <i>fAc</i> 3′ end joins to the proximal side of the insertion site to generate a chimeric gene containing exon 1 and exon 2 of <i>p2</i> and exon 3 of <i>p1</i>.</p><p>This study reports the isolation of the progenitor (A) and deletion products (C). Note that the hypothetical structures shown in (B) are transient in nature and would not be amenable to physical isolation.</p></div