Frequent human genomic DNA transduction driven by LINE-1 retrotransposition

Human L1 retrotransposons can produce DNA transduction events in which uniq ue DNA segments downstream of L1 elements are mobilized as part of aberrant retrotransposition events. That L1s are capable of carrying out such a rea ction in tissue culture cells was elegantly demonstrated. Using bioinformat ic approaches to analyze the structures of L1 element target site duplicati ons and Ranking sequence features, we provide evidence suggesting that simi lar to 15% of full-length L1 elements bear evidence of flanking DNA segment transduction. Extrapolating these findings to the 600,000 copies of LI in the genome, we predict that the amount of DNA transduced by L1 represents s imilar to 1% of the genome, a fraction comparable with that occupied by exo ns.