Computational Approaches for Retrotransposon Investigations

The eukaryotic genome restrains a large number of retrotransposons, which is an exceptionally infrequent group of transposable elements. Along with eukaryotes, these Class 1 transposons express their characteristics in retroviruses like HIV. The technique used by the retrotransposons to perform their particular function is “Copyand-Paste”(Nadeem, et al., 2018). Retrotransposition begins with the conversion of transposable DNA into RNA. Then they generate a second copy and paste at different genomic transposons (location) through which DNA is again attained by reverse transcription. Retrotransposons can be autonomous or non-autonomous. It also creates repeated DNA sequences in the full-length genome as a result of this process. The association of these transposable elements with their hosts is long-term which can be a strong reason that retrotransposons widely spread in many higher organisms (Kidwell and Lisch, 1997). On the other hand, the simply generated transposons are linked for a short time and are dependent on other hosts for their survival. The retrotransposons can be either long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) or short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs). In total 30% of the human genome is comprised of retrotransposons in which LINEs make up approximately 20 percent of the human genome (Cordaux and Batzer, 2009).