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Low Long Terminal Repeat (LTR)-Retrotransposon Expression in Leaves of the Marine Phanerogam Posidonia Oceanica L.

Seagrasses as Posidonia oceanica reproduce mostly by vegetative propagation, which can reduce genetic variability within populations. Since, in clonally propagated species, insurgence of genetic variability can be determined by the activity of transposable elements, we have estimated the activity of...

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Autores principales: Vangelisti, Alberto, Mascagni, Flavia, Usai, Gabriele, Natali, Lucia, Giordani, Tommaso, Cavallini, Andrea
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7151569/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32213979
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life10030030
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author Vangelisti, Alberto
Mascagni, Flavia
Usai, Gabriele
Natali, Lucia
Giordani, Tommaso
Cavallini, Andrea
author_facet Vangelisti, Alberto
Mascagni, Flavia
Usai, Gabriele
Natali, Lucia
Giordani, Tommaso
Cavallini, Andrea
author_sort Vangelisti, Alberto
collection PubMed
description Seagrasses as Posidonia oceanica reproduce mostly by vegetative propagation, which can reduce genetic variability within populations. Since, in clonally propagated species, insurgence of genetic variability can be determined by the activity of transposable elements, we have estimated the activity of such repeat elements by measuring their expression level in the leaves of plants from a Mediterranean site, for which Illumina complementary DNA (cDNA) sequence reads (produced from RNAs isolated by leaves of plants from deep and shallow meadows) were publicly available. Firstly, we produced a collection of retrotransposon-related sequences and then mapped Illumina cDNA reads onto these sequences. With this approach, it was evident that Posidonia retrotransposons are, in general, barely expressed; only nine elements resulted transcribed at levels comparable with those of reference genes encoding tubulins and actins. Differences in transcript abundance were observed according to the superfamily and the lineage to which the retrotransposons belonged. Only small differences were observed between retrotransposon expression levels in leaves of shallow and deep Posidonia meadow stands, whereas one TAR/Tork element resulted differentially expressed in deep plants exposed to heat. It can be concluded that, in P. oceanica, the contribution of retrotransposon activity to genetic variability is reduced, although the nine specific active elements could actually produce new structural variations.
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spelling pubmed-71515692020-04-20 Low Long Terminal Repeat (LTR)-Retrotransposon Expression in Leaves of the Marine Phanerogam Posidonia Oceanica L. Vangelisti, Alberto Mascagni, Flavia Usai, Gabriele Natali, Lucia Giordani, Tommaso Cavallini, Andrea Life (Basel) Article Seagrasses as Posidonia oceanica reproduce mostly by vegetative propagation, which can reduce genetic variability within populations. Since, in clonally propagated species, insurgence of genetic variability can be determined by the activity of transposable elements, we have estimated the activity of such repeat elements by measuring their expression level in the leaves of plants from a Mediterranean site, for which Illumina complementary DNA (cDNA) sequence reads (produced from RNAs isolated by leaves of plants from deep and shallow meadows) were publicly available. Firstly, we produced a collection of retrotransposon-related sequences and then mapped Illumina cDNA reads onto these sequences. With this approach, it was evident that Posidonia retrotransposons are, in general, barely expressed; only nine elements resulted transcribed at levels comparable with those of reference genes encoding tubulins and actins. Differences in transcript abundance were observed according to the superfamily and the lineage to which the retrotransposons belonged. Only small differences were observed between retrotransposon expression levels in leaves of shallow and deep Posidonia meadow stands, whereas one TAR/Tork element resulted differentially expressed in deep plants exposed to heat. It can be concluded that, in P. oceanica, the contribution of retrotransposon activity to genetic variability is reduced, although the nine specific active elements could actually produce new structural variations. MDPI 2020-03-24 /pmc/articles/PMC7151569/ /pubmed/32213979 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life10030030 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Vangelisti, Alberto
Mascagni, Flavia
Usai, Gabriele
Natali, Lucia
Giordani, Tommaso
Cavallini, Andrea
Low Long Terminal Repeat (LTR)-Retrotransposon Expression in Leaves of the Marine Phanerogam Posidonia Oceanica L.
title Low Long Terminal Repeat (LTR)-Retrotransposon Expression in Leaves of the Marine Phanerogam Posidonia Oceanica L.
title_full Low Long Terminal Repeat (LTR)-Retrotransposon Expression in Leaves of the Marine Phanerogam Posidonia Oceanica L.
title_fullStr Low Long Terminal Repeat (LTR)-Retrotransposon Expression in Leaves of the Marine Phanerogam Posidonia Oceanica L.
title_full_unstemmed Low Long Terminal Repeat (LTR)-Retrotransposon Expression in Leaves of the Marine Phanerogam Posidonia Oceanica L.
title_short Low Long Terminal Repeat (LTR)-Retrotransposon Expression in Leaves of the Marine Phanerogam Posidonia Oceanica L.
title_sort low long terminal repeat (ltr)-retrotransposon expression in leaves of the marine phanerogam posidonia oceanica l.
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7151569/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32213979
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life10030030
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