Tyl6, a novel Ty3/gypsy-like retrotransposon in the genome of the dimorphic fungus Yarrowia lipolytica

The novel LTR retrotransposon Ty16 was detected in the genome of the dimorphic fungus Yarrowia lipolytica. Sequence analysis revealed that this element is related to the well-known Ty3 element of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and, especially, to the recently described Tse3 retrotransposon of Saccharomyces exiguus and to the dell-like plant retrotransposons. Ty16 is 5108 by long, is flanked by two identical long terminal repeats (LTR), each of 276 bp, and its ORFs are separated by a -1 frameshift. Both ORFs are intact and deduced translation products display a significant similarity with those of previously described Ty3/gypsy retrotransposons. Distribution of Ty16 among Y. lipolytica strains of different origins was also analysed. A single copy of the novel retrotransposon is present in some commonly used laboratory strains, which are derivatives of the wild-type isolate YB423-12, whereas other strains of independent origin are devoid of Ty16. No solo LTR of TyI6 was detected in the analysed strains. The complete sequence of Ty16 was submitted to the EMBL nucleotide sequence database under Accession No. AJ746250. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.