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September 22, 2019  |  

Unexpected invasion of miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements in viral genomes

Authors: Zhang, Hua-Hao and Zhou, Qiu-Zhong and Wang, Ping-Lan and Xiong, Xiao-Min and Luchetti, Andrea and Raoult, Didier and Levasseur, Anthony and Santini, Sebastien and Abergel, Chantal and Legendre, Matthieu and Drezen, Jean-Michael and Beliveau, Catherine and Cusson, Michel and Jiang, Shen-Hua and Bao, Hai-Ou and Sun, Cheng and Bureau, Thomas E. and Cheng, Peng-Fei and Han, Min-Jin and Zhang, Ze and Zhang, Xiao-Gu and Dai, Fang-Yin

Transposable elements (TEs) are common and often present with high copy numbers in cellular genomes. Unlike in cellular organisms, TEs were previously thought to be either rare or absent in viruses. Almost all reported TEs display only one or two copies per viral genome. In addition, the discovery of pandoraviruses with genomes up to 2.5-Mb emphasizes the need for biologists to rethink the fundamental nature of the relationship between viruses and cellular life.

Journal: Mobile DNA
DOI: 10.1186/s13100-018-0125-4
Year: 2018

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