image: This is a microscopy image of individual E. coli cells engineered to fluoresce bright blue upon successful integration of the LINE-1 retroelement into their genome. view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Thomas E. Kuhlman.
Researchers report the effects of genetic retroelements, which copy and insert themselves into genomes and are hypothesized to be factors in the evolution of eukaryotic cells, on bacterial genomes, and find that the retroelements are detrimental to growth and that the lethality of the retroelements is enhanced by a form of DNA repair ubiquitous in eukaryotes; the results suggest that an interplay between DNA repair and retroelements may have exerted selective pressure during the evolution of eukaryotic cells.
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Article #18-07709: "Testing the retroelement invasion hypothesis for the emergence of the ancestral eukaryotic cell," by Gloria Lee et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Thomas Edward Kuhlman, University of California, Riverside, CA; e-mail: thomask@ucr.edu
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences