Silence at the End: How Drosophila Regulates Expression and Transposition of Telomeric Retroelements
The maintenance of chromosome ends in Drosophila is an exceptional phenomenon
because it relies on the transposition of specialized retrotransposons rather than on the activity of
the enzyme telomerase that maintains telomeres in almost every other eukaryotic species.
Sequential transpositions of Het-A, TART, and TAHRE (HTT) onto chromosome ends produce
long head-to-tail arrays that are reminiscent to the long arrays of short repeats produced by
telomerase in other organisms. Coordinating the activation and silencing of the HTT array with the