分子生物学Chapter6MobileGeneticElements.docVIP

Chapter 6 Mobile Genetic Elements Introduction Much of the discussion throughout this book deals with the functions of the gene products expressed from proteincoding genes and RNA genes. However, noncoding repetitious DNA, consisting of simple-sequence DNA and moderately repeated DNA, constitutes a significant fraction of the genomic DNA in higher eukaryotes. In this section, we focus on moderately repeated DNA sequences, or mobile DNA elements, which are interspersed throughout the genomes of higher plants and animals. Although mobile DNA elements, ranging from hundreds to a few thousand base pairs in length, originally were discovered in eukaryotes, they also are found in prokaryotes. The process by which these sequences are copied and inserted into a new site in the genome is called transposition. Mobile DNA elements (or simply mobile elements) are essentially molecular parasites, which appear to have no specific function in the biology of their host organisms, but exist only to maintain themselves. For this reason, Francis Crick referred to these sequences as “selfish DNA.” The transposition of mobile DNA elements is believed to have resulted in their slow accumulation in eukaryotic genomes over evolutionary time. These elements also are lost at a very slow rate by deletion of segments of DNA containing them and by accumulation of mutations until they can no longer be recognized to be related to the original mobile DNA element. Since mobile elements are eliminated from eukaryotic genomes so slowly, they have accumulated to the point where they now constitute a significant portion of the genomes of many eukaryotes. As research on mobile elements progressed, they were found to fall into two categories: (1) those that transpose directly as DNA and (2) those that transpose via an RNA intermediate transcribed from the mobile element by an RNA polymerase and then converted back into double-stranded DNA by a reverse transcriptase. Mobile elements that transpose throu