4.10.2019 Investigating the Possible Transposon

Rationale: Since we hypothesized that a transposon may be the cause of our highlighted repeat, it was beneficial to take a closer look to examine the evidence to see what it supported.

Procedure: The same tools (DNA Master, Phamerator, NCBI BLAST, and HHPred) were used to process data about this repeat and to begin to draw conclusions about it.

Results: Today’s results were less than encouraging. NCBI BLAST did not match the repeat to anything other than bacteriophages, which makes the notion that the possible transposon was from a different organism improbable. HHPred did not match to anything significant, and DNA Master offered no further results for the sequence other than the other members shared the same TAAA inverted repeat on either side of the sequence.

Conclusions: Since the other evidence supporting a transposon or a transposable element is not present, the initial thought that the repeat is a transposon may be incorrect. This would be difficult, as it would leave many more questions than answers about what kind of function this noncoding region could have.

Next Steps: Despite the negative results, the theory that the sequence is the result of a transposon is not completely debunked. More tests and analyses need to be run before a definitive conclusion can be made.