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Summary: Large-scale discovery of insertion hotspots and
preferential integration sites of human
transposed elements
Asaf Levy, Schraga Schwartz and Gil Ast*
Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University,
Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel
Received September 28, 2009; Revised November 14, 2009; Accepted November 16, 2009
ABSTRACT
Throughout evolution, eukaryotic genomes have
been invaded by transposable elements (TEs).
Little is known about the factors leading to
genomic proliferation of TEs, their preferred integra-
tion sites and the molecular mechanisms underlying
their insertion. We analyzed hundreds of thousands
nested TEs in the human genome, i.e. insertions of
TEs into existing ones. We first discovered that most
TEs insert within specific `hotspots' along the
targeted TE. In particular, retrotransposed Alu
elements contain a non-canonical single nucleotide
hotspot for insertion of other Alu sequences.
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