Fragmented landscapes of mobile transposable element families bolster the diversity of large-effect alleles in Arabidopsis
- 1Institut de Biologie de l Ecole Normale Superieure, ENS-PSL, UMR 8197 CNRS
Abstract
Transposable elements (TEs) are powerful endogenous mutagens, but our understanding of the 'mobilome' - the set of mobile TEs at the species level - has largely been shaped by the study of a single reference genome. To overcome this reference-centric view, we produced long-read genome assemblies for 91 Arabidopsis thaliana strains and performed a reference-free pangenomic graph analysis of structural variants. Our analysis revealed the presence of twice as many TE families with recent mobilization activity as previously described. These >200 newly identified TE families are ancestral, with a third experimentally shown to be mobile and although they are often characterized by the presence of full-length copies in only a few rather than in most strains, they nonetheless contribute significantly to the generation of large-effect alleles. These findings uncover a much more fragmented and impactful mobilome than previously documented and highlight how pangenome approaches dramatically improve the study of genetic diversity.
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BibTeX
@misc{petit2026fragmented,
title = {{Fragmented landscapes of mobile transposable element families bolster the diversity of large-effect alleles in Arabidopsis}},
author = {A. Petit and E. Caillieux and M. Reignier and N. A. Gueye and L. De Oliveira and C. Xu and C. Cordier and D. Sezginmert and V. Colot and P. Baduel},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.12.758581},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.758581v1},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Fragmented landscapes of mobile transposable element families bolster the diversity of large-effect alleles in Arabidopsis
AU - A. Petit
AU - E. Caillieux
AU - M. Reignier
AU - N. A. Gueye
AU - L. De Oliveira
AU - C. Xu
AU - C. Cordier
AU - D. Sezginmert
AU - V. Colot
AU - P. Baduel
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/12
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.12.758581
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.758581v1
AB - Transposable elements (TEs) are powerful endogenous mutagens, but our understanding of the 'mobilome' - the set of mobile TEs at the species level - has largely been shaped by the study of a single reference genome. To overcome this reference-centric view, we produced long-read genome assemblies for 91 Arabidopsis thaliana strains and performed a reference-free pangenomic graph analysis of structural variants. Our analysis revealed the presence of twice as many TE families with recent mobilization activity as previously described. These >200 newly identified TE families are ancestral, with a third experimentally shown to be mobile and although they are often characterized by the presence of full-length copies in only a few rather than in most strains, they nonetheless contribute significantly to the generation of large-effect alleles. These findings uncover a much more fragmented and impactful mobilome than previously documented and highlight how pangenome approaches dramatically improve the study of genetic diversity.
ER -