Alu repeats and human genomic diversity
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 1, 2026

Electrophoretic Analysis of Replication Through Structure-Prone DNA Repeats Within the SV40-Based Human Episome
Published on: September 13, 2024
Mark A Batzer1, Prescott L Deininger
1Department of Biological Sciences, Biological Computation and Visualization Center, Louisiana State University, 202 Life Sciences Building, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803, USA. mbatzer@lsu.edu
Abstract:
During the past 65 million years, Alu elements have propagated to more than one million copies in primate genomes, which has resulted in the generation of a series of Alu subfamilies of different ages. Alu elements affect the genome in several ways, causing insertion mutations, recombination between elements, gene conversion and alterations in gene expression. Alu-insertion polymorphisms are a boon for the study of human population genetics and primate comparative genomics because they are neutral genetic markers of identical descent with known ancestral states.
Related Concept Videos
Gene Duplication and Divergence
The duplicated copies of the gene are called Paralogs. Paralogs with similar sequences and functions form a gene family. Across several species, a large number of gene families are characterized.
Gene Conversion
Gene Conversion
Multi-species Conserved Sequences
Although the genome of each species varies greatly from each other, a few sequences are highly conserved. Such conserved DNA...
Genetic Variation
Genes exist in different versions called alleles, which...
Exon Recombination
Exon shuffling follows “splice frame rules.” Each exon has three reading...

