Related transposons in C.elegans and D.melanogaster

We have found that the transposable element Tel in Caenorhabditis elegans (1) is strikingly similar to a translated sequence found within the Drosophila melanogaster element HB1, a member of the HB family of repeats (2). Tel and HB1 ORFs are identical at 24X of aligned amino acid residues, including the two COOH-terminal residues of both sequences. Alignment requires only a single amino acid insertion in Tel and a 4 bp deletion (A) in HB1. The frameshift and stop codons in the HB1 sequence indicate that this member of the HB family does not now encode an active protein.