What’s in a name? TE
Nomenclature
Tyler A. Elliott
Research Associate, Adamowicz Lab

In the beginning…

1936 – Dt (Dotted)

1945 – Ac/Ds (Activator/Dissociation)

1972 – IS1, IS2 (Insertion Sequence)

1976

2008

1979 – Ty1 (Transposon of yeast 1)

1979 – Alu

1986 – mariner

1996

2005

Copia = RLC

RLC + Barbara family

RLC + Barbara + AF32378-1

RLC_Barbara_ AF32378-1

RLC_Tmon_Barbara_ AF32378-1

Wicker-like
• DTO_uuu_Gm7-1 (SoyTEdb)
• DHH_Hvul_Mothra_NA_1H-12 (TREP)
• DHH_Helios_3B_018_H13-1 (mips)
• RLC_egAngela_1 (Marcon et al., 2015)
• RLGy_42738 (Liu et al., 2018)
• RLCopia_1_5_cpa (DPTEdb)
• DMMITE_60_1_mnt (SPTEdb)

Copia

Copia-1

Copia-1 + Triticum monococcum

Copia-1_TM

BARBARA_TM

Repbase-like
• CopiaPr-1 (Jiang and Gover, 2006)
• Copia-4_10 (Solovyeva et al., 2021)
• CoCACTA1 (Suga et al., 2013)
• Ginger2_NA_RP (Zhang et al., 2013)
• penelope-1_dple (Baril and Hayward, 2022)
• ApoJockey (Glushkov et al., 2006)
• Cm-SINE-1 (Sormin et al., 2021)

Eponymous names

Eponymous names

Eponymous names

Eponymous names

Duplicates
• Odin – LINE and novel LTR Superfamily
• Samurai –L2 LINE and Ty3-like
• Hermes – Mutator and hAT
• Surcouf – Copia and Bel/Pao
• Enterprise – Crypton and Ty3-like
• Hydra – Copia and Penelope-like

Suggestions
• Check where your elements fit in the existing phylogeny of that group
of elements

Suggestions

Suggestions

Suggestions
• Check where your elements fit in the existing phylogeny of that group
of elements
• Code-based name in the very least, do a search to see if your
eponymous name is taken already

Suggestions
• Check where your elements fit in the existing phylogeny of that group
of elements
• Code-based name in the very least, do a search to see if your
eponymous name is taken already
• History of proposed name, context in other languages, cultures, etc.

Suggestions
• Check where your elements fit in the existing phylogeny of that group
of elements
• Code-based name in the very least, do a search to see if your
eponymous name is taken already
• History of proposed name, context in other languages, cultures, etc.
• Deposit elements into open resource like Dfam

Suggestions
• Check where your elements fit in the existing phylogeny of that group
of elements
• Code-based name in the very least, do a search to see if your
eponymous name is taken already
• History of proposed name, context in other languages, cultures, etc.
• Deposit elements into open resource like Dfam
• Would be nice to have a resource of existing names…..

Suggestions
• Check where your elements fit in the existing phylogeny of that group
of elements
• Code-based name in the very least, do a search to see if your
eponymous name is taken already
• History of proposed name, context in other languages, cultures, etc.
• Deposit elements into open resource like Dfam
• Would be nice to have a resource of existing names…..
• In the works!