We are sharing the most recent lab preprint by Marta Coronado-Zamora. Marta has developed a pipeline to identify gene-TE chimeric transcripts and has applied it to the transcriptomic data obtained from head, ovary and gut of five natural D. melanogaster strains. We found that 18.6% of body part specific transcripts are gene-TE chimeras. Overall, chimeric transcripts contribute a median of 38% to the total gene expression, and they provide both DNA binding and catalytic protein domains. Read all the details here.
