Premium
The rate of terminal nucleotide loss from a telomere of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae
Author(s) -
Walter M. F.,
Bozorgnia L.,
Maheshwari A.,
Biessmann H.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
insect molecular biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.955
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1365-2583
pISSN - 0962-1075
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2583.2001.00245.x
Subject(s) - biology , anopheles gambiae , telomere , genetics , transgene , drosophila melanogaster , chromosome , transposable element , gene , gene conversion , exonuclease iii , southern blot , microbiology and biotechnology , genome , escherichia coli , malaria , immunology
Using a single copy pUChsneo transgene insertion at the Anopheles gambiae 2L telomere, this chromosome end was monitored by genomic Southern blots for forty‐four mosquito generations. During this time, the chromosome end lost terminal nucleotides at an apparently constant rate of 55 bp/generation, which can be accounted for by incomplete DNA replication and does not imply exonuclease activity. No telomere elongation events were detected, suggesting that a previously described gene conversion event at this transgene does not occur very frequently. Moreover, no evidence for elongation by transposable elements was found, as described in Drosophila melanogaster . These results are consistent with the proposal that gene conversion between complex terminal satellite repeats that are present at natural telomeres, represents the major telomere elongation mechanism in A. gambiae. Such recombination events between repetitive sequences would occur more frequently than between the single copy pUChsneo transgene on the 2L homologues.