Meeting report: transposable elements at the crossroads of evolution, health and disease 2023
Irina R. Arkhipova,
Kathleen H. Burns,
Katherine B. Chiappinelli,
Edward B. Chuong,
Clement Goubert,
Alba Guarné,
Amanda M. Larracuente,
E. Alice Lee,
Henry L. Levin
Affiliations
Irina R. Arkhipova
Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution, Marine Biological Laboratory
Kathleen H. Burns
Department of Pathology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School
Katherine B. Chiappinelli
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Edward B. Chuong
BioFrontiers Institute and Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology, University of Colorado Boulder
Clement Goubert
McGill Genome Centre, Department of Human Genomics, Canadian Centre for Computational Genomics, McGill University
Alba Guarné
Department of Biochemistry and Centre de Recherche en Biologie Structurale, McGill University
Amanda M. Larracuente
Department of Biology, University of Rochester
E. Alice Lee
Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Henry L. Levin
Division of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health
Abstract The conference “Transposable Elements at the Crossroads of Evolution, Health and Disease” was hosted by Keystone Symposia in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, on September 3–6, 2023, and was organized by Kathleen Burns, Harmit Malik and Irina Arkhipova. The central theme of the meeting was the incredible diversity of ways in which transposable elements (TEs) interact with the host, from disrupting the existing genes and pathways to creating novel gene products and expression patterns, enhancing the repertoire of host functions, and ultimately driving host evolution. The meeting was organized into six plenary sessions and two afternoon workshops with a total of 50 invited and contributed talks, two poster sessions, and a career roundtable. The topics ranged from TE roles in normal and pathological processes to restricting and harnessing TE activity based on mechanistic insights gained from genetic, structural, and biochemical studies.
