ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Genet.
Sec. Evolutionary and Population Genetics
Structural heterogeneity and functional convergence of transposable elements
Provisionally accepted
- 1Afanas`ev Research Institute of Fur-Bearing Animal Breeding and Rabbit Breeding,, Moscow Province, Russia
- 2BoiMecial Informatics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, United States
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Almost half of mammalian genomes consist of transposons (TEs) and their derivatives. The distribution density of TEs can be associated with genomic regions of chromosomal rearrangements in different mammalian species and with the genomic localization of protein-coding genes that differ in length and function. To evaluate these characteristics at the local genomic level, an analysis of the distribution of various TEs (retrotransposons, DNA transposons) was performed in three mammalian species (human, cattle, and domestic rabbit) in genes with different functions and chromosomal localizations and their flanking regions. In humans and rabbits, melanophilin (MLPH) and myostatin (MSTN) are syntenic, but not in cattle; in cattle, MLPH and the leptin receptor (LEPR) are syntenic, while not in humans and rabbits; the alpha-thalassemia gene is always located on chromosome X. The results indicate that the frequencies of different TEs are species-specific and do not depend on genes' length, their function, or chromosomal localization. There were also species-specific differences in the ratio of "ancient" and "young" short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs) and long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs). There was a statistically significant positive correlation between "ancient" SINE+LINE and LTR ERV (p<0.01) and a significant negative correlation between "young" SINE+LINE and DNA transposons (p<0.05). Competitive relationships between TEs are probably defined by the presence of identical regulatory motifs in different TEs, associated with the reliance of TE amplification on the host's own regulatory systems.
Keywords: transposons, Regulatory elements, 'ancient' and 'young' repeats, Evolutionarily conserved, Spandrels
Received: 03 Apr 2025; Accepted: 05 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kosovsky, Glazko and Glazko. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Galina Glazko
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