The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

Guliuzza and Gaskill ◀ How organisms continuously track environmental changes ▶ 2018 ICC 175 Table 2 continued. Table 2 continued on next page. Mechanism Action Reference Research Entity Results Descriptive Extract of Function in CET Framework 2. Mobile Genetic Elements The regulated movement of defined segments of DNA carrying multiple genome formatting and coding sequences including molec- ularly symmetric DNA transposons characterized by terminal inverted repeats at each end; Long Inter- spersed Nucleotide Elements (LINEs), Short Interspersed Nucleotide Ele- ments (SINEs); and Long Terminal Repeat retrotrans- posons . Jiao, et al. 2017. Improved maize reference genome with single-mole- cule technologies. Nature Improved de novo assembly and annotation of the maize reference genome. Characterization of the repetitive portion of the genome revealed more than 130,000 intact transposable elements, allowing us to identify transposable element lineage expansions that are unique to maize. LINEs can be a mechanism of exon mobilization in protein- coding genes. LTRs only mobilize within the genome of a single cell. Different transposon insertions confer drought tolerance, altered flowering time, ability to grow in toxic aluminum-rich soils, and have allowed maize to spread to temperate latitudes by breaking sensitivity to the long days of the tropics. And broadly, transposable element insertions have been shown to alter gene expression in stressful conditions. Shapiro. 2013. How life chang- es itself: The Read–Write (RW) genome. Physics of Life Reviews Review article “There is now an extensive literature on the great diversity of challenges and stress factors that activate genome instability...[which] include nutritional deprivation, intercellular signaling molecules, exposure to toxic substances… and life history events such as hybridizations and infections... coupling DNA restructuring to transcription is particularly important because there is no question that cells have the ability to target transcription to particular sites in the genome as part of a biologically adaptive response to external and internal circumstances" pgs. 303, 306. Casacuberta and González. 2013. The impact of transposable ele- ments in environ- mental adaptation. Mol. Ecol. . Review article “Overall, the examples described previously strongly suggest a role of TEs in the ability of the host to respond to changes in the environment. The evidence that only some specific TE families, and not all the TEs in the genome, are activated in response to stress and the evidence that these TEs respond to some specific stress conditions and not others, strongly suggest that activation of TEs by stress is not only a byproduct of genome deregulation" p. 1513.