Synopsis
Transposable elements (TEs) are fragments of DNA that can move, or transpose, from one location to another in the genome. Due to their mobility, they are also called “jumping genes.” Plant TEs are extremely powerful mutagens, resulting in insertions, deletions, duplications, and chromosomal inversions. In addition to their well-described destructive roles as mutagens and molecular parasites, recent studies indicate that TE activity can have constructive roles in genomes. These include duplication of gene sequences, modification of gene expression patterns, and functionality as a chromosomal domain. This essay introduces the fundamental aspects of plant TEs with a focus on the recent discoveries of their constructive role in plant genomes and their interaction with the host genome and environment.
Introduction
TEs were first discovered by Barbara McClintock in the 1940s using maize as a model organism. Maize, a member of the grass (Poaceae) family, is as an excellent model...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Arabidopsis Genome Initiative (2000) Analysis of the genome sequence of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Nature 408:796–815
Fernandez L, Torregrosa L, Segura V, Bouquet A, Martinez-Zapater JM (2010) Transposon-induced gene activation as a mechanism generating cluster shape somatic variation in grapevine. Plant J 61:545–557
Feschotte C, Jiang N, Wessler SR (2002) Plant transposable elements: where genetics meets genomics. Nat Rev Genet 3:329–341
Jiang J, Birchler JA, Parrott WA, Dawe RK (2003) A molecular view of plant centromeres. Trends Plant Sci 8:570–575
Jiang N, Bao Z, Zhang X, Eddy SR, Wessler SR (2004) Pack-MULE transposable elements mediate gene evolution in plants. Nature 431:569–573
McClintock B (1948) Mutable loci in maize. Carnegie Inst Wash Yearb 47:155–169
Naito K, Zhang F, Tsukiyama T, Saito H, Hancock CN, Richardson AO, Okumoto Y, Tanisaka T, Wessler SR (2009) Unexpected consequences of a sudden and massive transposon amplification on rice gene expression. Nature 461:1130–1134
Schnable PS, Ware D, Fulton RS, Stein JC, Wei F, Pasternak S, Liang C, Zhang J, Fulton L, Graves TA, Minx P, Reily AD, Courtney L, Kruchowski SS, Tomlinson C, Strong C, Delehaunty K, Fronick C, Courtney B, Rock SM, Belter E, Du F, Kim K, Abbott RM, Cotton M, Levy A, Marchetto P, Ochoa K, Jackson SM, Gillam B, Chen W, Yan L, Higginbotham J, Cardenas M, Waligorski J, Applebaum E, Phelps L, Falcone J, Kanchi K, Thane T, Scimone A, Thane N, Henke J, Wang T, Ruppert J, Shah N, Rotter K, Hodges J, Ingenthron E, Cordes M, Kohlberg S, Sgro J, Delgado B, Mead K, Chinwalla A, Leonard S, Crouse K, Collura K, Kudrna D, Currie J, He R, Angelova A, Rajasekar S, Mueller T, Lomeli R, Scara G, Ko A, Delaney K, Wissotski M, Lopez G, Campos D, Braidotti M, Ashley E, Golser W, Kim H, Lee S, Lin J, Dujmic Z, Kim W, Talag J, Zuccolo A, Fan C, Sebastian A, Kramer M, Spiegel L, Nascimento L, Zutavern T, Miller B, Ambroise C, Muller S, Spooner W, Narechania A, Ren L, Wei S, Kumari S, Faga B, Levy MJ, McMahan L, van Buren P, Vaughn MW, Ying K, Yeh CT, Emrich SJ, Jia Y, Kalyanaraman A, Hsia AP, Barbazuk WB, Baucom RS, Brutnell TP, Carpita NC, Chaparro C, Chia JM, Deragon JM, Estill JC, Fu Y, Jeddeloh JA, Han Y, Lee H, Li P, Lisch DR, Liu S, Liu Z, Nagel DH, McCann MC, SanMiguel P, Myers AM, Nettleton D, Nguyen J, Penning BW, Ponnala L, Schneider KL, Schwartz DC, Sharma A, Soderlund C, Springer NM, Sun Q, Wang H, Waterman M, Westerman R, Wolfgruber TK, Yang L, Yu Y, Zhang L, Zhou S, Zhu Q, Bennetzen JL, Dawe RK, Jiang J, Jiang N, Presting GG, Wessler SR, Aluru S, Martienssen RA, Clifton SW, McCombie WR, Wing RA, Wilson RK (2009) The B73 maize genome: complexity, diversity, and dynamics. Science 326:1112–1115
Wolfgruber TK, Sharma A, Schneider KL, Albert PS, Koo DH, Shi J, Gao Z, Han F, Lee H, Xu R, Allison J, Birchler JA, Jiang J, Dawe RK, Presting GG (2009) Maize centromere structure and evolution: sequence analysis of centromeres 2 and 5 reveals dynamic Loci shaped primarily by retrotransposons. PLoS Genet 5:e1000743
Xiao H, Jiang N, Schaffner E, Stockinger EJ, van der Knaap E (2008) A retrotransposon-mediated gene duplication underlies morphological variation of tomato fruit. Science 319:1527–1530
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Jiang, N. (2014). Plant Transposable Elements: Beyond Insertions and Interruptions. In: Bell, E. (eds) Molecular Life Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6436-5_104-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6436-5_104-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6436-5
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences