Miniature Inverted-Repeat Transposable elements (MITEs) #

• MITEs are class II non-autonomous transposable elments characterized by relatively small size (<800 bp), AT-rich sequences, and flanking terminal inverted repeats (TIRs) ranging from 10 to 200 bp.

• MITEs were first identified in the maize genome and later in various other plant and animal genomes.

• Insertion of a MITE can produce Target site duplication (TSD) ranging from 2 to 11 bp depending on the MITE superfamily involved.

• Different MITE families are classified based upon TSD length, structure, and sequence similarity to the putative transposase of the corresponding DNA transposon.

• MITEs comprise two major families, namely Stowaway-like (with TA as the TSD) and Tourist-like (with TAA as the TSD), as well as several other minor families including hAT-like (with 5, 6, or 8 bp TSDs), MULE (with 9–10 bp TSDs), and En/Spm (3-bp TSDs).

MITE mining tools #

• FINDMITE
• MUST
• MITE Hunter
• RSBP
• MITE digger