Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 8, 2025

Isolation and Transcriptome Analysis of Plant Cell Types
Published on: April 7, 2023
Identification of Active Transposable Elements in Plants: The Mobilome-Seq Approach
Michael Thieme1, Anne C Roulin2
1Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Transposable elements (TEs) are the main component of eukaryotic genomes. Besides their impact on genome size, TEs are also functionally important as they can alter gene expression and influence phenotypic variation. In plants, most top-down studies focus on extremely clear phenotypes such as the shape or the color of individuals and do not explore fully the role of TEs in evolution. Assessing the impact of TEs in a more systematic manner, however, requires identifying active TEs to further study their impact on phenotypes. In this chapter, we describe an in planta approach that consists in activating TEs by interfering with pathways involved in their silencing. It enables to directly investigate the functional impact of single TE families at low cost.
Related Concept Videos
Overview of Transposition and Recombination
DNA-only Transposons
The donor site from where the transposon is excised is either degraded or...
Transposons
Transgenic Plants
The first-ever transgenic plant was a tobacco plant developed in 1983 that showed resistance against the tobacco mosaic virus. Since then, many transgenic plants have been developed and commercialized for improving the agricultural, ornamental, and horticultural value of a crop plant. Transgenic...
Microtubule Associated Motor Proteins
Non-LTR Retrotransposons

