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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Albany, California » Western Regional Research Center » Foodborne Toxin Detection and Prevention Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #175098
Title: CHARACTERISTICS OF A RETROTRANSPOSON FROM ASPERGILLUS FLAVUS

Author
item Hua, Sui Sheng
item TARUN, ALICE - USDA, ARS, WRRC
item PANDEY, SONAL - MJ BIOWORKS,SAN FRANCISCO
item Chang, Perng Kuang

Submitted to: Aflatoxin Workshop
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/25/2004
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: A 7784 bp DNA sequence containing the AFLAV (A. flavus retrotransposon) complete sequence has been submitted to GenBank (accession number AY485785). Two ORFs in AFLAV that were flanked by the nearly identical 5' and 3' LTR. The 5' and 3' LTRs of AFLAV both begin with TGTTA and terminate with TGTCA. Two possible motifs for promoter initiation are found in the 5' LTR region; a TATA box sequence (TATAA) at position 288-292 and two CAAT boxes (CAAT) at positions 213-216 and 331-334. The first ORF starts 250 bases downstream of the 5' LTR and encodes a predicted protein of 240 amino acids. The second ORF encodes a putative protein of 1726 amino acids. Sequence analysis indicates that various regions of this protein have homology to the CA domain of Gag and to the various domains of the Pol polyprotein: PR, RT, RH and IN found in that order. Other sequence feature found in AFLAV is the primer-binding site (PBS) for reverse transcription. This primer is usually a tRNA that binds to the PBS. However, retrotransposons in the Tf1/sushi subgroup, appear to form a secondary structure that enables self-priming for reverse transcription. This feature also found in AFLAV.