SPONGE RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS Short Research Note First evidence of miniature transposable elements in sponges (Porifera) Dirk Erpenbeck • Ju ¨ rgen Schmitz • Gennady Churakov • Dorothe ´e Huchon • Gert Wo ¨rheide • Bernard M. Degnan Received: 1 March 2011 / Accepted: 21 May 2011 / Published online: 8 June 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract Transposable elements play a vital role in genome evolution and may have been important for the formation of the early metazoan genome, but only little is known about transposons at this interface between unicellular opisthokonts and Metazoa. Here, we describe the first miniature transposable elements (MITEs, Queen1 and Queen2) in sponges. Queen1 and Queen2 are probably derived from Tc1/mariner- like MITE families and are represented in more than 3,800 and 1,700 copies, respectively, in the Am- phimedon queenslandica genome. Queen elements are located in intergenic regions as well as in introns, providing the potential to induce new splicing sites and termination signals in the genes. Further possible impacts of MITEs on the evolution of the metazoan genome are discussed. Keywords Early diverging Metazoa Á Porifera Á Transposable element Á MITE Á Amphimedon queenslandica Á Queen elements The origin of animals is among the greatest enigmas in evolutionary biology. In particular, genomic evolu- tion during the transition of unicellular protists to multicellular metazoans is still largely speculative Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10750-011-0775-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Guest editors: M. Maldonado, X. Turon, M. A. Becerro & M. J. Uriz / Ancient animals, new challenges: developments in sponge research Dirk Erpenbeck and Ju ¨rgen Schmitz have contributed equally to the paper. D. Erpenbeck Á G. Wo ¨rheide Department of Earth- and Environmental Sciences & GeoBio-CenterLMU, Ludwig-Maximilians Universita ¨t, Richard-Wagner-Str. 10, 80333 Mu ¨nchen, Germany D. Erpenbeck Á B. M. Degnan (&) School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia e-mail: b.degnan@uq.edu.au J. Schmitz (&) Á G. Churakov Institute of Experimental Pathology, ZMBE, University of Mu ¨nster, Von-Esmarch-Str. 56, 48149 Mu ¨nster, Germany e-mail: jueschm@uni-muenster.de D. Huchon Department of Zoology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel D. Huchon National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, 2024 W. Main St., Suite A200, Durham, NC 27705, USA 123 Hydrobiologia (2012) 687:43–47 DOI 10.1007/s10750-011-0775-4