Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
Name : The 47th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology
Date : 2020 -
The arms race between parasitic sequences and hosts is a major driving force for evolution of gene control systems. Since transposable elements (TEs) are potentially deleterious, eukaryotes silence them by epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation. Little is known about how TEs counteract the silencing to propagate during evolution. Here we report behavior of sequence-specific anti-silencing proteins used by Arabidopsis TEs and coevolution of those proteins and their target sequences. Through this coevolution, these TEs propagate with minimum host damage. Our findings provide insight into the evolutionary dynamics of these apparently "selfish" sequences.
