Activation of oncogenes by transposable elements

Mammalian DNA contains several families of highly repeated sequences, some of which have been suggested to be mobile elements. We have screened tumour tissue for the rearrangement of cellular oncogenes and found evidence for the behaviour of repetitive DNA sequences as transposable elements which may activate oncogenes. In the mouse myeloma NSI and XRPC24 we found that intracisternal A particle genome was inserted into the coding region of c-mos. In both cases the rearranged c-mos was transcriptionally activated and was also able to transform NIH 3T3 cells. In the canine transmissible venereal tumour we found that c-myc was rearranged due to the insertion of an 1.8 kilobase pair cellular DNA. Nucleotide sequence analysis demonstrated that the inserted piece is 60% homologous to the monkey KpnI element which is a representative of the LINE group.