Element:Circe

Description Circe is a LTR retrotransposon originally described in the heterochromatic regions of chromosomes III and Y of D. melanogaster, as a tandem organization of defective copies without LTRs (Losada, Abad and Villasante 1997). A later study revealed a sequence accession (AC005427) containing a clone flanked by LTRs, which was used along with two additional accessions (AJ132547 and X98424) to establish a full-length consensus for Circe, which belongs to Osvaldo clade (Malik and Eickbush 1999). The full-length consensus for Circe is 7.4 Kb in size including LTRs of 240 nt. The internal region of this element displays a Primer Binding Site (PBS) for a tRNALys3, three Open Reading Frames (ORFs) for gag, pol, and int genes, and a Polypurine Tract (PPT) adjacent to the 3´LTR (Losada, et al. 1999). Structure Figure not to scale. If present, long terminal repeats (LTRs) have been highlighted in blue. Amino acid motifs noted with lines indicate the conserved residues in each protein domain, abbreviations below mean: MA=matrix PR=protease DU or DUT=dUTPase TM=transmembrane TAV or IBMP=transactivator/viroplasmin or inclusion body matrix protein CA=capsid RT=reverse transcriptase INT=Integrase CHR=chromodomain NC=nucleocapsid RH=RNaseH SU=surface MOV=movement protein PPT=polypurine tract PBS=primer binding site ATF=aphid transmission factor VAP=virion associated protein Related literature Mobile DNA II. (Craig et al. 2002)

Genbank accession: AJ132547 X98424 AC005427 Clade: Osvaldo Cluster or genus: Undetermined Branch or class: Branch 2 Family: Ty3/Gypsy System: LTR retroelements Host: Explore the Tree Life Project Drosophila melanogaster Image, courtesy of Andreas Trepte, Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics Browse all elements