Figure 1.

Overview of the life cycle of an LTR retrotransposable element. The transcription of a Ty element is followed by priming with tRNA, reverse transcription leading to a transcribed U5-R region (red), formation of single-stranded DNA by RNase H and strand displacement. Upon a second round of reverse transcription, a U3 region is generated from the 3′ LTR (blue). After additional steps by RNase H and subsequent DNA synthesis, a circular intermediate primes the final DNA synthesis of the Ty element through base-pairing, and the DNA circle reopens for final completion of the linear transposable Ty element by DNA synthesis. The figure is adopted and modified from Telesnitsky and Goff (1997).