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Figure 1 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Figure 1

From: Inteins, introns, and homing endonucleases: recent revelations about the life cycle of parasitic genetic elements

Figure 1

Homing cycle of a parasitic genetic element (modified from [3, 13]). Recent findings suggest that due to complex population structure the cycle might not operate in synchrony in different subpopulations. The red arrows indicate the trajectory of the functioning HE and the black arrows the fate of the host gene. The precise loss can occur through recombination with an intein or intron free allele, or, in case of introns, through recombination with a reverse transcript of the spliced mRNA [39, 40].

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