Transposable elements have played an integral role in evolution and they constitute the most abundant entities in the eukaryotic genome. Helitrons are a recently-discovered family of transposable elements that apparently transpose through replication and strand replacement. Despite their abundance, there is no direct genetic evidence or proof for the existence of an autonomous Helitron. The investigators recently described two maize mutants that were caused by Helitron insertion and provided the first evidence that an active Helitron may reside in the present-day maize genome. This Small Grant for Exploratory Research will establish the direct genetic evidence of an active Helitron. This is high-risk project because the assertion that these maize mutants are caused by relatively recent insertion of Helitrons is based on the assumption that these were isolated in the 1900s. However, there remains a remote possibility that these mutants may represent remnants of ancient alleles that were not discovered earlier. The approach is potentially high pay-off because understanding the mode of transposition of this novel family of transposable elements may yield tools for crop improvement and provide novel insights into genome structure and organization. The objective of the project is to genetically identify the autonomous Helitron by monitoring various maize lines for somatic and heritable reversion events. This is essential in order to definitely identify an autonomous element and establish maize as a system to study the transposition of Helitrons. Broader Impact: The proposed research will provide interdisciplinary training opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students in Genetics, Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics and reach out to high school students involved in the field experiments. A new course has been developed specifically to integrate Bioinformatics into the mainstream undergraduate and graduate curricula at Oakland University. The students will gain hands-on experience in gene discovery and annotation of sequence data generated by the proposed research.
