A Tirant insertion in the alcohol dehydrogenase locus of Drosophila melanogaster

The complete Tirant transposable element in Drosophila melanogaster shows a structural relationship with retrovirus-like retrotransposons

We have determined the structure and organization of Tirant, a retrotransposon of Drosophila melanogaster reported in literature to be responsible for four independent mutations. Tirant is a long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposon 8527bp long. It possesses three open reading frames (ORF) encoding Gag, Pol and Env proteins with a strong similarity with ZAM, a recently identified member of the gypsy class of retrovirus-like mobile elements. Molecular analysis of the Tirant genomic copies present in four D. melanogaster strains revealed that most of them are defective, non-autonomous elements that differ in the position and extension of the conserved internal portion. Defective elements lacking the Gag ORF but retaining the Env ORF are abundant in heterochromatin. Four discrete Tirant transcripts are observed during embryogenesis in the strain Oregon-R, the smaller of which, 1.8kb in size, originates from the splicing of a primary transcript and leads to a subgenomic RNA coding for the Env product.

Tirant is a new member of the gypsy family of retrotransposons in Drosophila melanogaster

In this paper, we propose a consensus sequence for a putative complete Tirant retrotransposon. Several defective copies, as well as relevant sequences available in databases have been analyzed. The putative complete Tirant element is 8533 bp long, and presents all the structural features of a retrovirus-like transposable element of the gypsy family. It contains three ORFs (open reading frames) that encode putative products resembling the retroviral Gag, Pol, and Env proteins. Southern blot analyses show that complete and defective Tirant elements are widespread in Drosophila melanogaster. The different hybridization patterns observed in several natural populations of this species suggest that Tirant is an active element.