RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Rapid evolutionary diversification of the <em>flamenco</em> locus across simulans clade <em>Drosophila</em> species
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.09.29.510127
DO 10.1101/2022.09.29.510127
A1 Signor, Sarah
A1 Vedanayagam, Jeffrey
A1 Kim, Bernard Y.
A1 Wierzbicki, Filip
A1 Kofler, Robert
A1 Lai, Eric C.
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/11/17/2022.09.29.510127.abstract
AB Effective suppression of transposable elements (TEs) is paramount to maintain genomic integrity and organismal fitness. In D. melanogaster, flamenco is a master suppressor of TEs, preventing their movement from somatic ovarian support cells to the germline. It is transcribed by Pol II as a long (100s of kb), single-stranded, primary transcript, that is metabolized into Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) that target active TEs via antisense complementarity. flamenco is thought to operate as a trap, owing to its high content of recent horizontally transferred TEs that are enriched in antisense orientation. Using newly-generated long read genome data, which is critical for accurate assembly of repetitive sequences, we find that flamenco has undergone radical transformations in sequence content and even copy number across simulans clade Drosophilid species. D. simulans flamenco has duplicated and diverged, and neither copy exhibits synteny with D. melanogaster beyond the core promoter. Moreover, flamenco organization is highly variable across D. simulans individuals. Next, we find that D. simulans and D. mauritiana flamenco display signatures of a dual-stranded cluster, with ping-pong signals in the testis and/or embryo. This is accompanied by increased copy numbers of germline TEs, consistent with these regions operating as functional dual stranded clusters. Overall, the physical and functional diversity of flamenco orthologs is testament to the extremely dynamic consequences of TE arms races on genome organization, not only amongst highly related species, but even amongst individuals.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.