Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 6, 2026

Quantitative Comparison of cis-Regulatory Element (CRE) Activities in Transgenic Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: December 19, 2011
Evolutionary pattern of the gtwin retrotransposon in the Drosophila melanogaster subgroup
1Programa de Pós-Graduação em Genética e Biologia Molecular, Departamento de Genética, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
Abstract:
The gtwin retrotransposon was recently discovered in the Drosophila melanogaster genome and it is evolutionarily closer to gypsy endogenous retrovirus. This study has identified gtwin homologous sequences in the genome of D. simulans, D. sechellia, D. erecta and D. yakuba by performing homology searches against the public genome database of Drosophila species. The phylogenetic analyses of the gtwin env gene sequences of these species have shown some incongruities with the host species phylogeny, suggesting some horizontal transfer events for this retroelement. Moreover, we reported the existence of DNA sequences putatively encoding full-length Env proteins in the genomes of Drosophila species other than D. melanogaster. The results suggest that the gtwin element may be an infectious retrovirus able to invade the genome of new species, supporting the gtwin evolutionary picture shown in this work.
Related Concept Videos
Exon Recombination
Exon shuffling follows “splice frame rules.” Each exon has three reading...
Cis-regulatory Sequences
LTR Retrotransposons
The internal coding region of LTR retrotransposons and their mechanism of transposition closely resembles a...
Non-LTR Retrotransposons
Position-effect Variegation
Retroviruses

