Mobilization of Newly Identified Transposon Muta1 in Ae. aegypti and D. melanogaster

My research aims to identify and test endogenous transposons in Ae. aegypti that remain active. In order to address this, the bioinformatics pipelines MITE-Hunter and TARGeT (Tree Analysis of Related Genes and Transposon) were used for identifying new active transposons in Ae. aegypti genome. Concurrent bioinformatics analysis performed discovered an interesting Mutator superfamily element called Muta1. To verify the activity of the Muta1 element it was tested for it somatic activity in D. melanogaster and Ae. aegypti through excision and transposition assays. The somatic assays revealed that the Muta1 element was active in D. melanogaster and Ae. aegypti. I also determined the germline and remobilization activity of the Muta1 element post integration in D. melanogaster and Ae. aegypti. The experiment determined that the Muta1 element was able to remobilized post integration in D. melanogaster and Ae. aegypti. Another goal of this project focused on determining any relationship that might exist between the Muta1 element and piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) in D. melanogaster, which was naïve to the Muta1 element. Based on the studies in D. melanogaster it is believed that piRNAs play role in protecting the genome from invasions of transposons. My goal here was to generate small RNA libraries to determine at which generation following transformation; the autonomous Muta1 element in D. melanogaster will be silenced by detection of sequence specific piRNAs to the Muta1 element. The library analysis revealed production of abundance of sense piRNAs to the Muta1 transposase. Despite production of piRNAs, the Muta1 element was still active in the transgenic flies. This suggests that the Muta1 element might be highly active such that it was able to evade detection for suppression by host silencing machinery. Together all of these studies present first evidence of a Mutator superfamily transposon activity in insects specifically D. melanogaster and Ae. aegypti