Downloaded from genome.cshlp.org on September 25, 2021 - Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 1 LTR retrotransposons create transcribed retrocopies in metazoans 2 Shengjun Tan1, Margarida Cardoso-Moreira2,3, Wenwen Shi1, Dan Zhang1,4, Jiawei Huang1,4, 3 Yanan Mao1, Hangxing Jia1,4, Yaqiong Zhang1, Chunyan Chen1,4, Yi Shao1,4, Liang Leng1, 4 Zhonghua Liu5, Xun Huang5, Manyuan Long6, Yong E. Zhang1,4,7 5 1Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution & State Key Laboratory of 6 Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy 7 of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. 8 2Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland 9 3Present address: Zentrum für Molekulare Biologie der Universität Heidelberg (ZMBH), 10 69120 Heidelberg, Germany. 11 4University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China 12 5State Key Laboratory of Molecular Developmental Biology, Institute of Genetics and 13 Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China 14 6Department of Ecology and Evolution, The University of Chicago, Chicago 60637, IL, USA. 15 7Corresponding author. E-mail:
[email protected]. 16 Running title: LTR retrotransposon mediated retroposition 17 Keywords: LTR retrotransposon, retrocopy, template switch, microsimilarity, exon shuffling 18 Downloaded from genome.cshlp.org on September 25, 2021 - Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 19 20 Abstract 21 In a broad range of taxa, genes can duplicate through an RNA intermediate in a process 22 mediated by retrotransposons (retroposition). In mammals, L1 retrotransposons drive 23 retroposition but the elements responsible for retroposition in other animals have yet to be 24 identified.