Characterisation of LTR-Retrotransposons of Stevia rebaudiana and Their Use for the Analysis of Genetic Variability

Stevia rebaudiana is one of the most important crops belonging to the Asteraceae family. Stevia is cultivated all over the world as it represents a valid natural alternative to artificial sweeteners thanks to its leaves, which produce steviol glycosides that have high sweetening power and reduced caloric value. In this work, the stevia genome sequence was used to isolate and characterise full-length long-terminal repeat retrotransposons (LTR-REs), which account for more than half of the genome. The Gypsy retrotransposons were twice as abundant as the Copia ones. A disproportionate abundance of elements belonging to the Chromovirus/Tekay lineage was observed among the Gypsy elements. Only the SIRE and Angela lineages represented significant portions of the genome among the Copia elements. The dynamics with which LTR-REs colonised the stevia genome were also estimated; all isolated full-length elements turned out to be relatively young, with a proliferation peak around 1–2 million years ago. However, a different analysis conducted by comparing sequences encoding retrotranscriptase showed the occurrence of an older period in which there was a lot of LTR-RE proliferation. Finally, a group of isolated full-length elements belonging to the lineage Angela was used to analyse the genetic variability in 25 accessions of S. rebaudiana using the Inter-Retrotransposon Amplified Polymorphism (IRAP) protocol. The obtained fingerprints highlighted a high degree of genetic variability and were used to study the genomic structures of the different accessions. It was hypothesised that there are four ancestral subpopulations at the root of the analysed accessions, which all turned out to be admixed. Overall, these data may be useful for genome sequence annotations and for evaluating genetic variability in this species, which may be useful in stevia breeding.