Plant Transposable Elements: Biology and Evolution

Beginning with the pioneering work in the 30s and 40s of Barbara McClintock, R.A. Brink, Rollins Emerson, Marcus Rhoades, and other prominent maize geneticists, transposable elements (TEs) have come to occupy a central position in the study of plant genomes. Not only did McClintock’s discovery of the Activator/Dissociation (Ac/Ds) system of maize change forever our appreciation of the dynamic nature of chromosomes, her seminal characterization of the regulatory influence of ‘controlling elements’ (such as Ac/Ds and later the Enhancer/Suppressor-Mutator (En/Spm) system) on adjacent gene expression paved the way for decades of exciting research on the control, both genetic and epigenetic, of gene regulation in plants and other eukaryotes.