Transposable Elements at the Crossroads of Evolution, Health and Disease

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ABSTRACT Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Transposable Elements at the Crossroads of Evolution, Health and Disease, organized by Drs. Kathleen Burns, Harmit Malik and Irina Arkhipova. The conference will be held in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada from September 3-6, 2023. Transposable elements are omnipresent in every domain of life and play an eminent role in shaping biological properties of living organisms. The field of transposon research has significantly expanded with the realization that mobile DNA constitutes a major component of most genomes and that transposable element sequences, while generally mutagenic, can be co-opted to benefit the host species. Moreover, rapid development of tools to study transposon activities enables the efforts to differentiate their causal and epiphenomenal effects. There is a pressing need to understand the many ways in which mobile DNA affects genome evolution and shapes its function under normal and pathological states. The aims of this conference are to: 1) Apply recent advances in genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics towards an overview of transposon integration into genomic compartments, epigenetic processes and regulatory networks over evolutionary time scales; 2) Expand structural and mechanistic insights into the nature of transposition processes affecting genome dynamics and integrity; 3) Close the gaps in understanding transposon mobilization and its control at the molecular, cellular, organismal, and population levels, highlighting the impact on carcinogenesis, neurodegeneration and aging; 4) Showcase the applications of fundamental knowledge on mobile element-host interactions to the burgeoning fields of genome engineering, biomedicine, plant and environmental sciences. Accelerating advances in the field will attract new investigators who will benefit greatly from this conference, while giving the long-standing experts reasons to reconvene, share methodologies, and promote new collaborations between leading international groups on the broadest possible scale, exploring all kingdoms of life.