Transposable element insertions have strongly affected human evolution

Abstract

Comparison of a full collection of the transposable element (TE) sequences of vertebrates with genome sequences shows that the human genome makes 655 perfect full-length matches. The cause is that the human genome contains many active TEs that have caused TE inserts in relatively recent times. These TE inserts in the human genome are several types of young Alus (AluYa5, AluYb8, AluYc1, etc.). Work in many laboratories has shown that such inserts have many effects including changes in gene expression, increases in recombination, and unequal crossover. The time of these very effective changes in the human lineage genome extends back about 4 million years according to these data and very likely much earlier. Rapid human lineage-specific evolution, including brain size is known to have also occurred in the last few million years. Alu insertions likely underlie rapid human lineage evolution. They are known to have many effects. Examples are listed in which TE sequences have influenced human-specific genes. The proposed model is that the many TE insertions created many potentially effective changes and those selected were responsible for a part of the striking human lineage evolution. The combination of the results of these events that were selected during human lineage evolution was apparently effective in producing a successful and rapidly evolving species.

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