ArticleGenome biology and evolution2015
Multilevel Selection Theory and the Evolutionary Functions of Transposable Elements.
Article in Genome biology and evolution, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 50 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pervasive noise in human pre-mRNA splice site selection.Molecular cell · 2026Article
- Transposon Ecology and the Octopus Genome.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Do duplication-inducing elements 'cooperate' with genes in evolutionary arms races? A case study on cereal crop pathogenesis.BMC plant biology · 2025Article
- The evolutionary landscape of prokaryotic chromosome/plasmid balance.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Stress does not induce a general transcription of transposable elements in Drosophila.Molecular biology reports · 2022Review
- Thermodynamics of evolution and the origin of life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Toward a theory of evolution as multilevel learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Distinct Retrotransposon Evolution Profile in the Genome of Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Transposon dynamics and the epigenetic switch hypothesis.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2021Article
- Transposable Element Landscape in Drosophila Populations Selected for Longevity.Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Transposable element persistence via potential genome-level ecosystem engineering.BMC genomics · 2020Article
- Multiple serine transposase dimers assemble the transposon-end synaptic complex during ISeLife · 2018Article
- Anthropoid primate-specific retroviral element THE1B controls expression of CRH in placenta and alters gestation length.PLoS biology · 2018Article
- The Role of Transposable Elements in Speciation.Genes · 2018Review
- On causal roles and selected effects: our genome is mostly junk.BMC biology · 2017Article
- Genome size in arthropods; different roles of phylogeny, habitat and life history in insects and crustaceans.Ecology and evolution · 2017Article
- Selfish genetic elements and the gene's-eye view of evolution.Current zoology · 2016Article
- Viruses and mobile elements as drivers of evolutionary transitions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Review
- Lessons from non-canonical splicing.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2016Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
One of several issues at play in the renewed debate over "junk DNA" is the organizational level at which genomic features might be seen as selected, and thus to exhibit function, as etiologically defined. The intuition frequently expressed by molecular geneticists that junk DNA is functional because it serves to "speed evolution" or as an "evolutionary repository" could be recast as a claim about selection between species (or clades) rather than within them, but this is not often done. Here, we review general arguments for the importance of selection at levels above that of organisms in evolution, and develop them further for a common genomic feature: the carriage of transposable elements (TEs). In many species, not least our own, TEs comprise a large fraction of all nuclear DNA, and whether they individually or collectively contribute to fitness--or are instead junk--is a subject of ongoing contestation. Even if TEs generally owe their origin to selfish selection at the lowest level (that of genomes), their prevalence in extant organisms and the prevalence of extant organisms bearing them must also respond to selection within species (on organismal fitness) and between species (on rates of speciation and extinction). At an even higher level, the persistence of clades may be affected (positively or negatively) by TE carriage. If indeed TEs speed evolution, it is at these higher levels of selection that such a function might best be attributed to them as a class.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.