DIRS and Ngaro Retrotransposons in Fungi

Retrotransposons with a tyrosine recombinase (YR) have been discovered recently and lack thorough annotation in fungi. YR retrotransposons are divided into 3 groups: DIRS, Ngaro and VIPER (known only from kinetoplastida). We used comparative genomics to investigate the evolutionary patterns of retrotransposons in the fungal kingdom. The identification of both functional and remnant elements provides a unique view on both recent and past transposition activity. Our searches covering a wide range of fungal genomes allowed us to identify 2241 YR retrotransposons. Based on CLANS clustering of concatenated sequences of the reverse transcriptase (RT), RNase H (RH), DNA N-6-adenine-methyltransferase (MT) and YR protein domains we propose a revised classification of YR elements expanded by two new categories of Ngaro elements. A phylogenetic analysis of 477 representatives supports this observation and additionally demonstrates that DIRS and Ngaro abundance changed independently in Basidiomycota and Blastocladiomycota/Mucoromycotina/Kixellomycotina. Interestingly, a single remnant Ngaro element could be identified in an Ascomycota genome. Our analysis revealed also that 3 Pucciniomycotina taxa, known for their overall mobile element abundance and big genome size, encode an elevated number of Ngaro retrotransposons. Considering the presence of DIRS elements in all analyzed Mucoromycotina, Kickxellomycotina and Blastocladiomycota genomes one might assume a common origin of fungal DIRS retrotransposons with a loss in Dicarya. Ngaro elements described to date from Opisthokonta, seem to have invaded the common ancestor of Agaricomycotina and Pucciniomycotina after Ustilagomycotina divergence. Yet, most of analyzed genomes are devoid of YR elements and most identified retrotransposons are incomplete.