This article is part of the supplement: Transposons in vertebrate functional genomics
Transposable elements and the dynamic somatic genome
The Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development, The Cancer Center, The University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Church St SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA
Genome Biology 2007, 8(Suppl 1):S5 doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-s1-s5
Published: 31 October 2007Abstract
Although alterations in the genomes of somatic cells cannot be passed on to future generations, they can have beneficial or detrimental effects on the host organism, depending on the context in which they occur. This review outlines the ways in which transposable elements have important consequences for somatic cell genomes.
