Evidence for the adaptive significance of an LTR retrotransposon sequence in a Drosophila heterochromatic gene

Background  

The potential adaptive significance of transposable elements (TEs) to the host genomes in which they reside is a topic that has been hotly debated by molecular evolutionists for more than two decades. Recent genomic analyses have demonstrated that TE fragments are associated with functional genes in plants and animals. These findings suggest that TEs may contribute significantly to gene evolution.