COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CONFORMATIONAL, ARCHITECTURAL AND THERMODYNAMIC SIGNALS IN UPSTREAM FLANKS OF MPING ELEMENTS INSERTIONS IN TWO SUBSP. OF CULTIVATED RICE

Abstract: Transposable elements rewire gene regulation in eukaryotes. The proliferation and elimination of mobile genetic elements are well known to play a significant role in genome size variation within a single genus. The insertion of Transposable elements occurred millions of years ago, and active element copies are very low; therefore, it is exceedingly difficult to obtain enough data to test this hypothesis rigorously. Though a class II (Transposons) rice endogenous transposable element, mPING, is still active, its transposition is found to be highly significant under stress conditions, which would be key to answering this question. The bio-computational approach was used to analyse the dispersion of mPING in two cultivated rice subspecies, indica and japonica, which showed 14 and 52 insertions, respectively. The 50 base pairs 5’ strand upstream flanking sequences were analysed for structural and physical properties. The comparative analysis revealed a significant variation, which further indicated hidden physical/structural genomic sequence specificity. Keywords: Transposable elements, Retrotransposon, Bio-computational approach, Structural, Physical.