| Transposable elements (TE) have been found in all genomes and have clearly had a major impact on genomic evolution. The described research takes advantage of an abundant transposable element present in the genomes of Anseriformes, called Chicken Repeat 1 (CR1). Previous studies in Anseriformes suggest that CR1 is presently active in recent evolutionary time (St. John, 2004). A fully functional CR1 element itself is approximately 4.5kb long (Kajikawa, 1997), where almost all inserts are truncated at the 5' end. Because of this, it has been a challenge to isolate a full length, active element. In this study, two CR1 sequences were obtained after screening a genomic library of Cape Barren Goose using probes complimentary to the flanking regions of the element. The findings unveiled sequences with a complete ORF1, ORF2, 3' untranslated region and a portion of the 5' untranslated region. This study gets one step closer a further understanding the transposition mechanism that are adopted by this class of TE's, a non-long terminal repeat (non-LTR) retransposons. Eventually, the capture of an active element could make it especially valuable for future research by investigating their ability to transpose in living cells. |
