Characterization and expression pattern of ZB and PS transposons in zebrafish

Abstract

Despite comprising much of the genome, transposons were once thought of as junk. However, transposons play many roles in the eukaryotic genome, such as providing new proteins as domesticated genes, expressing during germline-soma differentiation, function in DNA rearrangement in the offspring, and so on. We sought to describe the distribution and structural organization of the two autonomous transposons (ZB and PS) in the zebrafish genome and examine their expression patterns in embryos and adult tissues. The intact copy of ZB and PS was queried by BLAST on NCBI and ENSEMBL using default parameters. Of the copies with coverage and identity, more than 90 % were downloaded to do structural analysis. Spatial and temporal expression patterns were detected by qRT-PCR and Whole-mount in situ hybridization (WISH). There are 19 intact copies of ZB, encoding 341 amino acid residues with DD34E catalytic domain and flanked by 201bp TIRs, and seven intact PS copies, containing 425 amino acid residues with DD35D catalytic domain flanked by 28bp TIRs, were detected in the genome of zebrafish respectively. Analysis of genomic insertions indicated that both ZB and PS transposons are prone to be retained in the intron and intergenic regions of the zebrafish genome. The sense and antisense transcripts of ZB and PS were detected during embryonic development stages and exhibited similar expression patterns. The difference is that the sense strand transcript of ZB was explicitly expressed in midbrain-hindbrain boundary (MHB) and otic vesicle (OV), and pharyngeal arches and pharyngeal pouches (PA&PP) at 48 hpf. In adult zebrafish, the expressions of ZB and PS in muscle and brain are much higher than in other tissues. Our study results indicate that ZB and PS transposons may be involved in the embryonic development and regulation of somatic cells of certain adult tissues, such as the brain and muscle.