Figure 5. RRMI between human and chimpanzee lineages.

The mechanism underlying RRMI is shown at the left. In the illustration of the ancestral state, the two retrotransposons have intact TSDs whose sequence is listed in the colored boxes. The shape “X” indicates recombination between the retrotransposons. In the illustration of the human-specific inversion, both retrotransposons are chimeric, and no longer have matching TSDs. For both illustrations, two arrows indicate the positions where each oligonucleotide primer anneals to for PCR amplification. Agarose-gel chromatographs of PCR products are shown on the right. The upper gel picture displays the ancestral state of the RRMI, while the lower gel picture displays the human-specific inversion. The DNA templates used in each PCR reaction are shown on top of the gel pictures.