Suppression of Transposable Element Activity as an Approach to Therapy

From the abstract

Transposable elements are DNA sequences that can copy themselves. The remnants of ancient viral infections, they encode viral-like particles that act to insert DNA into the genome. Transposable elements are suppressed in youth, but with age the epigenetic control over DNA structure and gene expression is altered, and one of the consequences is that transposable elements are exposed to translation machinery and begin to copy themselves. This produces a form of DNA damage where that haphazard inse