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Composition and evolutionary importance of transposable elements in humans and primates

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Abstract

Transposable elements (TEs) have skill of altering the position inside the genome and these TEs are widespread in both of plants and animals. They are separated into class I called retrotransposons, and class II called DNA transposons. According to the previous studies, not only TEs are related with disease, they are key factor of human and primate evolution. From this review, we discussed about the impact of transposable element, its role in the genome of human and primates and how TE distribution is differ from them. Additionally, we described how TEs contributed on primate evolution by its unique role. This review could be great use for further studies in relation to evolution mechanism and various diseases.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by an award from the AGENDA project (Project No. PJ009254) at the National Institute of Animal Science, Rural Development Administration (RDA).

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There is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Pusan National University, Busan, 609-735, Republic of Korea

    Hee-Eun Lee, Jungwoo Eo & Heui-Soo Kim

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  1. Hee-Eun Lee
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  2. Jungwoo Eo
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Correspondence to Heui-Soo Kim.

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Lee, HE., Eo, J. & Kim, HS. Composition and evolutionary importance of transposable elements in humans and primates. Genes Genom 37, 135–140 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-014-0249-y

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