Most organisms do not have the high transposon load that we have. For those like us, and given a general tendency of transposons to insert at random into new DNA loci, how come we exist at all? Isn’t ...Most organisms do not have the high transposon load that we have. For those like us, and given a general tendency of transposons to insert at random into new DNA loci, how come we exist at all? Isn’t the danger of transposition into essential gene sequences magnified by the possibility of multiple simultaneous transpositions of elements generated by cut-and-paste and especially replicative mechanisms? Indeed, transposons have been found in genes that are inactive as a result.
