Abstract
Proteins encoded by mobile genetic elements occasionally assume cellular roles. Telomerase, for example, is a reverse transcriptase that replicates chromosome ends, and Rag1 is a transposase that mediates immunoglobulin gene rearrangements. In this article, we report cellular genes related to integrases that are not associated with a retrovirus or retrotransposon. These integrases are found in diverse eukaryotes and are evolving under functional constraint. We propose that the cellular integrases have assumed a host role and, like their retroelement counterparts, probably function in DNA metabolism.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 133-137 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Trends in Genetics |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2005 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Henry Levin and Weiwu Xie for helpful comments on this article. This work was supported by NIH grant GM61657 to D.F.V.