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Letter

Multiple waves of recent DNA transposon activity in the bat, Myotis lucifugus

¹ Department of Biology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506, USA; ² Department of Biology, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, USA; ³ Department of Entomology and Institute for Integrative Genome Biology, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA; ⁴ Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA

DNA transposons, or class 2 transposable elements, have successfully propagated in a wide variety of genomes. However, it is widely believed that DNA transposon activity has ceased in mammalian genomes for at least the last 40 million years. We recently reported evidence for the relatively recent activity of hAT and Helitron elements, two distinct groups of DNA transposons, in the lineage of the vespertilionid bat Myotis lucifugus. Here, we describe seven additional families that have also been recently active in the bat lineage. Early vespertilionid genome evolution was dominated by the activity of Helitrons, mariner-like and Tc2-like elements. This was followed by the colonization of Tc1-like elements, and by a more recent explosion of hAT-like elements. Finally, and most recently, piggyBac-like elements have amplified within the Myotis genome and our results indicate that one of these families is probably still expanding in natural populations. Together, these data suggest that there has been tremendous recent activity of various DNA transposons in the bat lineage that far exceeds those previously reported for any mammalian lineage. The diverse and recent populations of DNA transposons in genus Myotis will provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the impact of this class of elements on mammalian genome evolution and to better understand what makes some species more susceptible to invasion by genomic parasites than others.

⁶ Corresponding author.

E-mail David.Ray{at}mail.wvu.edu; fax (304) 293-6363.

[Supplemental material is available online at www.genome.org.]

Article published online before print. Article and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.071886.107.

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