Retrotransposons of Arabidopsis thaliana expressed in wild-type plants

Sofya Gvaramiya¹, Murad Omarov², Ilya Kirov^3
1Department of marker-assisted and genomic selection of plant All-Russia Research Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, sofia.gvaramia@gmail.com
²Department of marker-assisted and genomic selection of plant All-Russia Research Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, muradok98@gmail.com
³Department of marker-assisted and genomic selection of plant All-Russia Research Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, kirovez@gmail.com

Mobile genetic elements are widely spread across the genomes of plants and animals. Of them, retrotransposons occupy substantial part of the genome. They had a huge impact on host genome evolution. However, their current activity in plant cell is thought to be very low on both RNA and cDNA (mobilome) levels because multiple silencing pathways. To get deeper insight into the mechanisms of mobilome formation we carried out identification of transcribed TEs of model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. Using bioinformatics and ‘wet’ approaches we found evidence of expression of 6 TEs of A.thaliana. This opens a door for further functional studies of how some TEs can overcome the genome defense against retrotransposon activity.