Stress-induced Rim2/Hipa pseudogene of rice exhibits alternative tailing and splicing during transcription

The rice Rim2/Hipa is a unique stress-induced transposon superfamily recently identified in Oryza genomes. In the present study, we conducted genome-wide screening of full-length Rim2 cDNA from the pathogen-induced cDNA libraries and mining of cDNA databases. Four indica and two japonica types of transcripts were identified, which were transcribed from the same Rim2 pseudogene Rim2-42 that contains premature stop codons in the TNP2-TPase coding region. These data demonstrated that the processing of the Rim2 transcripts exhibited variations within and between the two subspecies. These transcripts were found to be produced by alternative transcription (tailing) or splicing from Rim2-42 under stress conditions. An additional Rim2-like transcript (Rim2-XET), a chimera of Rim2 and XET genes, were also found to be derived from read-through. These results show that the Rim2 transposon probably loses its transposition capacity during evolution, and that Rim2-42 inserts downstream of the stress-inducible XET promoter, resulting in Rim2 transcript accumulation upon pathogen attack.