Characterization of the marsupial endogenous retrovirus walb with a focus on satellite DNA formation

Abstract

The walbRep megasatellite DNA found in the red-necked wallaby was formed from the walb endogenous retrovirus. Our previous PCR experiments suggested the presence of walb and absence of walbRep in the genome of the tammar wallaby, which diverged from the red-necked wallaby 2-3 Mya. The results failed to exclude the possibility that certain walbRep sequences might have remained undetected owing to variation in the primer-annealing regions; therefore, the aforementioned suggestion was not confirmed. To obtain conclusive evidence, we analyzed the structure of walb sequences drawn from the tammar wallaby genome database recently updated to a chromosome-level assembly. All walb copies existed as separate DNA segments, not constituting tandem repeats. We concluded that walbRep was formed in the red-necked wallaby lineage after its divergence from the tammar wallaby. We also confirm the presence of a walb copy with an anomalistic, complex structure and propose a simple model for its generation mechanism.

Keywords: Betaretrovirus; Long terminal repeat; Mammals; Megasatellite DNA; Retrotransposition; Retrotransposon; Tandem repeats.