Widespread interspecific divergence in cis-regulation of transposable elements in the Arabidopsis genus

Fei He, Xu Zhang, Jin Yong Hu, Franziska Turck, Xue Dong, Ulrike Goebel, Justin O. Borevitz, Juliette De Meaux*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Transposable elements (TEs) are so abundant and variable that they count among the most important mutational sources in genomes. Nonetheless, little is known about the genetics of their variation in activity or silencing across closely related species. Here, we demonstrate that regulation of TE genes can differ dramatically between the two closely related Arabidopsis species A. thaliana and A. lyrata. In leaf and floral tissues of F1 interspecific hybrids, about 47% of TEs show allele-specific expression, with the A. lyrata copy being generally expressed at higher level. We confirm that TEs are generally expressed in A. lyrata but not in A. thaliana. Allele-specific differences in TE expression are associated with divergence in epigenetic modifications like DNA and histone methylation between species as well as with sequence divergence. Our data demonstrate that A. thaliana silences TEs much better than A. lyrata. For long terminal repeat retrotransposons, these differences are more pronounced for younger insertions. Interspecific differences in TE silencing may have a great impact on genome size changes.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1081-1091
Number of pages11
JournalMolecular Biology and Evolution
Volume29
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2012
Externally publishedYes

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