phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at o:2979 DOI 10.1371/journal.pgen.1011201 Spoink, a LTR retrotransposon, invaded D. melanogaster populations in the 1990s During the last few centuries D. melanogaster populations were invaded by several transposable elements, the most recent of which was thought to be the P-element between 1950 and 1980. Here we describe a novel TE, which we named Spoink, that has invaded D. melanogaster. It is a 5216nt LTR retrotransposon of the Ty3/gypsy superfamily. Relying on strains sampled at different times during the last century we show that Spoink invaded worldwide D. melanogaster populations after the P-element between 1983 and 1993. This invasion was likely triggered by a horizontal transfer from the D. willistoni group, much as the P-element. Spoink is probably silenced by the piRNA pathway in natural populations and about 1/3 of the examined strains have an insertion into a canonical piRNA cluster such as 42AB. Given the degree of genetic investigation of D. melanogaster it is perhaps surprising that Spoink was able to invade unnoticed. eng Animals; Drosophila melanogastergenetics; Retroelements; Piwi-Interacting RNA; Drosophilagenetics; DNA Transposable Elements 2024-05-14T09:22:36.507Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Pianezza;Riccardo; FN:Riccardo Pianezza X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6213-7853 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Kofler;Robert; FN:Robert Kofler X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9960-7248 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Signor;Sarah; FN:Sarah Signor END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Scarpa;Almorò; FN:Almorò Scarpa END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Narayanan;Prakash; FN:Prakash Narayanan END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 application/pdf 3660715 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:2979 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/api/object/o:2979/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline