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

We report the cloning of hermit, a member of the hAT 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 autonomous hobo element, HFL1, at the nucleic acid level. Hermit has 15 bp terminal inverted repeats that share 10 bp with the terminal inverted repeats of HFL1. Conceptual translation reveals a 583 residue open reading frame (ORF) that is 64% similar and 42% identical to the HFL1 ORF. However, the sequence of the hermit element contains two frameshifts within the putative ORF, indication that hermit is an inactive element. Analysis of L. cuprina strains from within and outside Australia suggested that hermit is present as a single copy in all the genomes analysed.