TY - JOUR T1 - Evolution of ribosomal internal transcribed spacers in Deuterostomia JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/112797 SP - 112797 AU - Alexandr Dyomin AU - Valeria Volodkina AU - Elena Koshel AU - Svetlana Galkina AU - Alsu Saifitdinova AU - Elena Gaginskaya Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/01/112797.abstract N2 - Sequences of ribosomal internal transcribed spacers (ITSs) are of great importance to molecular phylogenetics and DNA barcoding, but remain unstudied in some large taxa of Deuterostomia. We have analyzed complete ITS1 and ITS2 sequences in 62 species from 16 Deuterostomia classes, with ITSs sequences in 24 species from 11 classes initially obtained using unannotated contigs and raw read sequences. A general tendency for both ITS length and GC-content increase from interior to superior Deuterostomia taxa, a uniform GC-content in both ITSs within the same species, thymine content decrease in sense DNA sequences of both ITSs are shown. A possible role of GC-based gene conversion in Deuterostomia ITSs evolutionary changes is hypothesized. The first example of non-LTR retrotransposon insertion into ITS sequence in Deuterostomia is described in turtle Geochelone nigra. The roles of mobile genetic element insertions in the evolution of ITS sequences in some Sauropsida taxa are discussed as well.HTShigh-throughput sequencingIGSintergenic spacerITSinternal transcribed spacerWGSwhole genome sequence shotgunSRAsequence read archiveMGCmobile genetic elementsgBGCGC-biased gene conversion ER -