Figure 1.

Primary regulatory roles of transposable elements (TEs). TEs are a rich source of host genome innovations. TE functions are either harmful or beneficial to the host genome, and their integration in the genome may induce deleterious mutations. Silenced TEs, mostly covered with DNA methylation, can affect the expression of nearby genes. In contrast, active TEs can act as regulatory elements by producing noncoding RNA (ncRNA) and alternative promoters. The illustration was adapted and redrawn from Jönsson et al. [43], with copyright permission from the Licensor Elsevier (Trends in Genetics: Cell Press publisher) and Copyright Clearance Center (https://www.copyright.com) (Supplementary File S1).