CARE1, a TY3-gypsy long terminal repeat retrotransposon in the food legume chickpea (Cicer arietinum L)

We report a novel Ty3-gypsy long terminal repeat retrotransposon CARE1 (Cicer arietinum retro-element 1) in chickpea. This 5920-bp AT-rich (63%) element carries 723bp 5' and 897-bp 3' LTRs respectively flanking an internal region of 4300-bp. The LTRs of CARE1 show 93.9% nucleotide identity to each other and have 4-bp (ACTA) terminal inverted repeats. A 17-bp potential tRNAmet primer binding site downstream to 5' LTR and a 13-bp polypurine tract upstream to 3' LTR have been identified. The order of domains (Gag-proteinase-reverse transcriptase-RNaseH-integrase) in the deduced amino acid sequence and phylogenetic tree constructed using reverse transcriptase sequences places CARE1 in the gypsy group of retrotransposons. Homologues of a number of ciselements including CCAAT, TATA and GT-1 have been detected in the regulatory region or the 5' LTR of CARE1. Transgenic tobacco plants containing 5' LTR:GUS construct show that its 5'-LTR is inactive in a heterologous system under normal as well as tissue culture conditions. Genomic Southern blot experiments using 5’LTR of the element as a probe show that CARE1 or its related elements are present in the genomes of various chickpea accessions from various geographic regions.