Transposable element abundance correlates with mode of transmission in microsporidian parasites.

Mob DNA

Department of Genetics and Post-Graduation Program of Genetics and Molecular Biology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Bento Gonçalves 9500, Porto Alegre, RS 91501-970 Brazil.

Published: June 2020

The extreme genome reduction and physiological simplicity of some microsporidia has been attributed to their intracellular, obligate parasitic lifestyle. Although not all microsporidian genomes are small (size range from about 2 to 50 MB), it is suggested that the size of their genomes has been streamlined by natural selection. We explore the hypothesis that vertical transmission in microsporidia produces population bottlenecks, and thus reduces the effectiveness of natural selection. Here we compare the transposable element (TE) content of 47 microsporidian genomes, and show that genome size is positively correlated with the amount of TEs, and that species that experience vertical transmission have larger genomes with higher proportion of TEs. Our findings are consistent with earlier studies inferring that nonadaptive processes play an important role in microsporidian evolution.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7313128PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13100-020-00218-8DOI Listing

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