Malazy, a degenerate, species-specific transposable element in Cercospora zeae-maydis

Abstract: Two fungal pathogens, Cercospora zeae-maydis Groups I and II, cause gray leaf spot of maize. During the sequencing of a cosmid library from C. zeae-maydis Group I, we discovered a sequence with high similarity to Maggy, a transposable element from Magnaporthe grisea. The element from C. zeae-maydis, named Malazy, contained 194-base-pair ter-minal repeats and sequences with high similarity to reverse transcriptase and integrase, components of the POL gene in the gypsy-like retrotransposons in fungi. Sequences with similarity to other POL gene components, protease and ribonuclease, were not de-tected in Malazy. A single copy of the element was detected by PCR and Southern analyses in all six North American isolates of C. zeae-maydis Group