Chapter category: DNA
Mobile Genetic Elements of Malaria Vectors and Other Mosquitoes
Mobile Genetic Elements in Metazoan Parasites
Edited by: Paul J. BrindleyISBN: 978-1-58706-093-9
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Chapter authors:
Zhijian Tu and Song Li
Mosquitoes are important vectors of a number of disease agents including malarial and filarial parasites as well as many types of viruses. A wide spectrum of both RNA-mediated and DNA-mediated transposable elements (TEs) have been discovered in the African malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, and other mosquito species. Mosquito TEs are potentially useful as tools for genetic manipulation, or as markers for population studies. Such genetic and population studies are relevant to the long-term strategy to control mosquito-borne infectious diseases through the introduction and spread of refractory mosquitoes in natural populations. Here we present an overview of the characteristics of mosquito TEs. We highlight several mosquito TEs that appear to be transpositionally active and a few newly discovered elements that offer interesting perspectives on TE diversity, classification, and transposition. TE display, a PCR-based genome scan method, is also described in the context of uncovering polymorphism at TE insertion sites and detecting new transposition events. We conclude the review outlining questions that are of fundamental and applied significance in mosquito TE research and providing promising new research avenues in light of a growing number of mosquito genome projects and systems biology methods.
Additional chapters from this book:
Mobile Genetic Elements of Malaria Vectors and Other Mosquitoes
Zhijian Tu and Song Li
Mosquitoes are important vectors of a number of disease agents including malarial and filarial parasites as well as many types of viruses. A wide spectrum of both RNA-mediated and DNA-mediated trans...
Schistosome Long Terminal Repeat Retrotransposons
Claudia S. Copeland, Thewarach Laha and Paul J. Brindley
The human schistosomes, blood flukes of the Genus Schistosoma, have a large genome estimated to be at least 270 megabase pairs (haploid) in size, arrayed on eight pairs (2n = 16) of chromosomes incl...
Retrotransposons in the Genomes of the Digenean Parasitic Trematodes, Clonorchis sinensis and Paragonimus westermani
Young-An Bae and Yoon Kong
Considerable fractions of almost all eukaryotic genomes are composed of a variety of transposable elements (TEs). Members of the phylum Platyhelminthes are also thought to contain diverse TEs which ...
Transposon Mediated Transgenesis of Mosquitoes
Craig J. Coates
The first six years of mosquito transgenesis have seen dramatic increases in the number of mosquito species that have been genetically transformed, the number of transposable element vectors that ha...
Schistosome Long Terminal Repeat Retrotransposons
Claudia S. Copeland, Thewarach Laha and Paul J. Brindley*
The human schistosomes, blood flukes of the Genus Schistosoma, have a large genome estimated to be at least 270 megabase pairs (haploid) in size, arrayed on eight pairs (2n = 16) of chromosomes incl...
Non-Long Terminal Repeat Retrotransposons Colonizing Schistosome Genomes
Thewarach Laha, Claudia S. Copeland and Paul J. Brindley
It has become apparent that the schistosome genome is replete with numerous copies of diverse repetitive sequences. Mobile genetic elements constitute much of this repetitive component of the sc...
Schistosome DNA Transposons
Ricardo DeMarco and Sergio Verjovski-Almeida
Schistosomes are digenetic blood flukes and the causative agents of schistosomiasis in humans. Large transcriptome and genome sequence databases have recently become publicly available for Sch...
Endogenous Retrotransposon Sequences of the Schistosoma mansoni Intermediate Snail Host, Biomphalaria glabrata
Matty Knight, Joanna Bridger, Wannaporn Ittiprasert, Edwin Odoemelam, Julio Masabanda, André Miller and Nithya Raghavan
Schistosomiasis remains a major public health concern in 75 countries. Disease preva- lence and transmission is intimately associated with the presence of freshwater snails that serve as interme...
