Fig. 3.

—Rewiring of a regulatory network mediated by TEs without nonalleic gene conversion (a) and with nonallelic gene conversion (b). Initially, a DNA-binding protein (black circle) binds to a particular motif (yellow stripes) contained within a given TE family (gray rectangles). A new motif (red stripe) that confers an advantage to the system (e.g., improves the binding efficiency) arises by mutation to the initial motif. This new motif can be preferentially utilized by being dispersed to several new genomic locations by transposition of the TE copy (gray arrows) containing the motif (a), or by being dispersed by transposition and also by replacing the old motif with the new motif via nonallelic gene conversion (blue arrows) (b).