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Journal of Heredity Advance Access published online on April 14, 2009
Journal of Heredity, doi:10.1093/jhered/esp017
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© The American Genetic Association. 2009. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Hermes Transposon Distribution and Structure in Musca domestica

Ramanand A. Subramanian, Laura A. Cathcart, Elliot S. Krafsur, Peter W. Atkinson, and David A. O'Brochta

From the Center for Biosystems Research, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, 9600 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, MD 20850 (Subramanian, Cathcart, and O'Brochta); the Department of Entomology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA (Krafsur); and the Department of Entomology and Institute of Integrative Genome Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA (Atkinson)

Address correspondence to David A. O'Brochta at the address above, or e-mail: obrochta{at}umbi.umd.edu.

Hermes are hAT transposons from Musca domestica that are very closely related to the hobo transposons from Drosophila melanogaster and are useful as gene vectors in a wide variety of organisms including insects, planaria, and yeast. hobo elements show distinct length variations in a rapidly evolving region of the transposase-coding region as a result of expansions and contractions of a simple repeat sequence encoding 3 amino acids threonine, proline, and glutamic acid (TPE). These variations in length may influence the function of the protein and the movement of hobo transposons in natural populations. Here, we determine the distribution of Hermes in populations of M. domestica as well as whether Hermes transposase has undergone similar sequence expansions and contractions during its evolution in this species. Hermes transposons were found in all M. domestica individuals sampled from 14 populations collected from 4 continents. All individuals with Hermes transposons had evidence for the presence of intact transposase open reading frames, and little sequence variation was observed among Hermes elements. A systematic analysis of the TPE-homologous region of the Hermes transposase-coding region revealed no evidence for length variation. The simple sequence repeat found in hobo elements is a feature of this transposon that evolved since the divergence of hobo and Hermes.

Key Words: Hermes • Herves • hobo • Musca domestica • P elements • transposable element

Corresponding Editor: Tomoko Steen

Received October 21, 2008
Revised February 27, 2009
Accepted March 16, 2009


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