The ability of transposable elements to epigenetically influence adjacent genes impacts genome evolution by driving substantial variation in transposon numbers between species.
Fully functional regulatory elements can arise rapidly from transposable elements via a novel route where non-allelic gene conversion can act to speed up the evolutionary fine-tuning of regulatory elements.
Fine mapping of transposable element presence/absence variation amongst 216 Arabidopsis strains uncovers widespread novel genetic diversity that underlies differences in transcription and DNA methylation patterns.
Genetic and epigenetic editing experiments establish causal links between transposon-derived enhancers and gene regulation in mouse embryonic and extraembryonic lineages.
Soon after fertilisation, a critical portion of the embryonic genome is switched on through the actions of maternally inherited Stella, in part through controlling the activation of transposable elements.
Population genomics in Arabidopsis thaliana uncovers an extensive repertoire of active transposable element families at the species level and reveals their importance as a source of rare alleles with large effects.
A new approach combines guide RNA multiplexing with CRISPR activation and interference to facilitate functional studies of transposable elements present in hundreds of copies throughout the human genome.
Hundreds of retrovirus-like sequences have features that suggest they might be gene enhancers, but only a small fraction displays gene-regulating activity in experiments on mouse stem cells.
