Related Experiment Videos
Similarity between the Myxococcus xanthus and Stigmatella aurantiaca reverse transcriptase genes associated with
1Department of Biochemistry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Rutgers, Piscataway 08854.
Abstract:
To determine the evolutional relationship of bacterial retroelements of Myxococcus xanthus and Stigmatella aurantiaca, the nucleotide sequence of 3,060 bases encompassing msr, msd, and the upstream region of msd (downstream of msr) of S. aurantiaca DW4 was determined and compared with the same region from M. xanthus. An open reading frame was found 92 bases upstream of msd which encoded a polypeptide of 480 amino acid residues having 73% identity with the reverse transcriptase of M. xanthus. Together with high homologies in msr (86%) and msd (81%) regions, the present data indicate that the reverse transcriptase genes as well as the retrons of M. xanthus (retron-Mx162) and S. aurantiaca (retron-Sa163) were derived from a common progenitor retron which possibly before the two myxobacterial species diverged.