Transposable elements (TEs), also called transposons, are DNA sequences capable of moving or replicating from one location to ...

Most lethal mutations in wild fruit flies are driven by newly transferred jumping genes, not small DNA errors, according to a new study from Duke University. The findings, published in PLOS Biology, ...

Ancient viruses are embedded everywhere in the human genome. Estimates range, but it's thought that about eight percent of the human genome could be made up of these ancient retroviruses, which are ...

Heterochromatin, sometimes known as the “dark side of the genome,” is a poorly studied fraction of DNA that makes up about half of our genetic material. For more than 50 years scientists have puzzled ...

Most lethal mutations in wild fruit flies are driven by newly transferred jumping genes, not small DNA errors, according to a new study from Duke University. The findings, published in PLOS Biology, ...

Sankey diagram illustrating the inferred functions of TE-proximal genes. The width of connections between each vertical block represents the gene count, delineating GO term classifications associated ...

To understand how organisms are related, researchers use molecular information to construct phylogenetic trees. Most of the time, scientists use thousands of protein-coding sequences to determine ...

There are probably around 20,000 genes in the human genome that code for protein, and cells have to transcribe DNA sequences into RNA, which is then processed before it is translated into proteins by ...

Keith Slotkin, PhD, first became interested in transposable elements (TE), colloquially known as “jumping genes,” as an undergraduate student. “They just broke all the rules,” he said in an interview ...