The hermit transposable element of the Australian sheep blowfly, Lucilia cuprina, belongs to the hAT family of transposable elements

We report the cloning ofhermit, a member of thehAT family of transposable elements from the genome of the Australian sheep blowfly,Lucilia cuprina. Hermit is 2716 bp long and is 49% homologous to the autonomoushobo element,HFL1, at the nucleic acid level.Hermit has 15 bp terminal inverted repeats that share 10 bp with the terminal inverted repeats ofHFL1. Conceptual translation reveals a 583 residue open reading frame (ORF) that is 64% similar and 42% identical to theHFL1 ORF. However, the sequence of thehermit element contains two frameshifts within the putative ORF, indication thathermit is an inactive element. Analysis ofL. cuprina strains from within and outside Australia suggested thathermit is present as a single copy in all the genomes analysed.