MUST: A system for identification of miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements and applications to Anabaena variabilis and Haloquadratum walsbyi

Transposable elements (TE) are functionally important genetic elements that can move within a genome. Miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs) constitute a class of transposable elements that are usually small in size and have high numbers of conserved copies. Identifying all the MITEs in a genome could provide new insights about gene evolution and genome dynamics of the organism. We present a web-based MITE Uncovering SysTem (MUST) for prediction and analyses of MITEs at a genome level. MUST reliably found both the previously known and novel MITEs in the two bacterial genomes, Anabaena variabilis ATCC 29413 and Haloquadratum walsbyi DSM 16790. MUST is available at http://csbll.bmb.uga.edu/ffzhou/ MUST/ (the standalone version is available upon request). Supplementary data associated with this article are available in the online version or at: http://csbll.bmb.uga.edu/ffzhou/MUST/supp/. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.