New computational tool simulates evolution of jumping genes
· News-MedicalShujun Ou, senior study author, assistant professor of molecular genetics, Ohio StateIn the timescale of millions or tens of millions of years, transposon activity is really dense. There are many, many transposon insertions and deletions to the genome and from the genome."
Because the simulation is covering millions of generations of evolution, PrinTE built a safeguard to detect and terminate trajectories headed in the wrong direction to maximize efficiency.
The simulations in myrtle rust showed that the TE insertion rate was 4 to 5 times higher than the deletion rate, causing the excessively large genome, and these bursts were then followed by a drop in insertions, which is a sign of tightened control of TE activity.
"One main conclusion in this paper is that the most effective way to control the genome size is to not have any infection in the first place," Ou said.
The publicly available tool has already been used by scientists studying other systems.
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