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Transposable elements

Transposons_mediumHigh-throughput sequencing, especially long-read sequencing, has demonstrated the prevalence of transposable elements in the eukaryotic genome. Transposons have the potential for deleterious effects, for example through introducing genomic instability, but also provide a route for genetic and epigenetic variability, probably playing a key role in adaptive evolution. 

This Guest Edited Collection in BMC Genomics brings together this broad field to highlight the ubiquity and potential utility of these elements. We considered submissions covering technology and software, evolutionary biology, application of transposons as genetic tools, mechanisms, embryonic development and disease. We bring all eukaryotes from unicellular organisms to multicellular plants and humans.


Meet the Guest Editors

Gökhan Karakülah, Dokuz Eylül University, Turkey

gokhan.karakulah for collectionGökhan Karakülah, PhD, is a computational biologist specializing in next generation sequencing and multiomics analysis. Dr. Karakülah’s research has focused on noncoding genes and repeat elements, especially transposable elements, and their roles in biological processes, such as development and disease.


Marie-Anne Van Sluys, Universidade de São Paulo; Botânica - Biosciences Institute, Brazil

Transposable elements_Van SluysMarie-Anne Van Sluys is a full professor with three main areas of research namely transposable elements, genomics and plant-microbe interactions. These are key to her strong capacity building in molecular biology and genomics of plants and bacteria in Brazil. In the early 90s, she demonstrated that Ac transposable element from maize could jump to new chromosomal locations in Arabidopsis thaliana genome as well as methylation at specific genic positions resulted in silencing the element even in heterologous systems after meiosis. More recently, studies on the genome of several plant pathogens unraveled the association of these moving units with genomic islands that define species and pathotypes mostly in Xylella and Xanthomonas, important pathogens of several worldwide important crops such as rice, orange, sugarcane, cauliflower and tomato.

Submission guidelines

This collection welcomes submissions of Research articles and Software articles on the topic of transposable elements. Reviews will be considered at the discretion of the Journal’s Editor.  

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process overseen by our Guest Editors. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

Please ensure you highlight in your cover letter that you are submitting to a collection. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Transposable elements". 

Published Articles