Mapping A Clan Of Mobile Selfish Genes

Saturday, October 25, 2008 - 22:35 in Biology & Nature

Alu retrotransposons are gradually changing human DNA by making copies of themselves and "jumping" to new locations. Their activity appears to depend on being able to mimic parts of the cell's internal machinery. To identify the Alu retrotransposons that are still capable of moving around, researchers divided them into families and tested a representative of each family in the laboratory.

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