Identification and
Structural Analysis of a Class of Potentially Transposable Solo-LTR in Rice
Genome
ZHOU Bo, CHEN Ze-Hua, HAN Bin, HONG Guo-Fan*
( National Ceneter for Gene Research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Shanghai 200233, China )
Abstract Two
solo-LTRs, named SLTR1 and SLTR2,were found in BAC t17804 and
q5343 on rice chromosome 4, respectively. SLTR1 is in a 18 S rRNA gene
and SLTR2 is in a retrotransposon. They share sequence homology and
show sequence similarity 89.1% and 70.1% to the LTR of rice retrotransposon RIRE8,
respectively. SLTR1 and SLTR2 are of gypsy retrotransposons
of rice. They are both highly repetitive sequences and widely distributed in
the rice genome, as shown by hybridization with specific probes of SLTR1
and SLTR2. Using PCR amplication with primers on flanking sequences of
SLTR1 and SLTR2, no bands corres ponding to those of BACs
were amplified using the rice genomic DNA as template. SLTR1 and SLTR2
did not locate in the relative loci of the rice genome, as supported by
hybridization with specific probes of genes interrupted by them. Obviously, SLTR1
and SLTR2 reported here came from different loci of the genome by the
transposition. These solo-LTRs may be useful for our rice genome studies.
Key words rice； solo-LTR； retrotransposon
*Corresponding author： Tel, 86-21-64516371； Fax, 86-21-64825775； e-mail, [email protected]