Skip to main content

Table 2 Main characteristics of the most abundant retrotransposons [4, 5, 7, 19]

From: Major influence of repetitive elements on disease-associated copy number variants (CNVs)

 

Retrotransposons (interspersed repeats)—44 % human genome

Non-long terminal repeat (LTR)

Long terminal repeat (LTR)

Repetitive element

Long interspersed nuclear repeats (LINEs)

Short interspersed nuclear repeats (SINEs)

Endogenous retroviruses (ERV)

Genomic coverage

20 %

11 %

8 %

Features

• L1 is the most abundant class

• Autonomous transposons

• Reverse transcriptase (RT) encoded by LINE-1

• Alu is the most abundant class

• Dependent on LINEs transposable machinery

• Mobile polymerase III promoter

• 100–400 bp in length

• Reduced transposable activity

• Presence of gag and pol viral genes