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Updated: Mar 25, 2026

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Published on: June 10, 2009
The First Rule of Plant Transposable Element Silencing: Location, Location, Location
Meredith J Sigman1, R Keith Slotkin2
1Department of Molecular Genetics and Center for RNA Biology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210.
Abstract:
Transposable elements (TEs) are mobile units of DNA that comprise large portions of plant genomes. Besides creating mutations via transposition and contributing to genome size, TEs play key roles in chromosome architecture and gene regulation. TE activity is repressed by overlapping mechanisms of chromatin condensation, epigenetic transcriptional silencing, and targeting by small interfering RNAs. The specific regulation of different TEs, as well as their different roles in chromosome architecture and gene regulation, is specified by where on the chromosome the TE is located: near a gene, within a gene, in a pericentromere/TE island, or at the centromere core. In this Review, we investigate the silencing mechanisms responsible for inhibiting TE activity for each of these chromosomal contexts, emphasizing that chromosomal location is the first rule dictating the specific regulation of each TE.
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