How valuable are model organisms for transposable element studies ?

Model organisms have proved to be highly informative for many types of gene tic studies involving 'conventional' genes. The results have often been suc cessfully generalized to other closely related organisms and also, perhaps surprisingly frequently, to more distantly related organisms. Because of th e wealth of previous knowledge and their availability and convenience, mode l organisms were often the species of choice for many of the earlier studie s of transposable elements. The question arises whether the results of gene tic studies of transposable elements in model organisms can be extrapolated in the same ways as those of conventional genes? A number of observations suggest that special care needs to be taken in generalizing the results fro m model organisms to other species. A hallmark of many transposable element s is their ability to amplify rapidly in species genomes. Rapid spread of a newly invaded element throughout a species range has also been demonstrate d. The types and genomic copy numbers of transposable elements have been sh own to differ greatly between some closely related species. Horizontal tran sfer of transposable elements appears to be more frequent than for nonmobil e genes. Furthermore, the population structure of some model organisms has been subject to drastic recent changes that may have some bearing on their transposable element genomic complements. In order to initiate discussion o f this question, several case studies of transposable elements in well-stud ied Drosophila species are presented.