"Jumping genes" are ubiquitous. Every domain of life hosts these sequences of DNA that can "jump" from one position to another along a chromosome; in fact,nearly half the human genome is made up of jumping genes. Depending on their specific excision and insertion points, jumping genes can interrupt or trigger gene expression, and driving genetic mutation and contributing to cell diversification. Since their discovery in the 1940s,researchers gain been able to study the behavior of these jumping genes, generally known as transposons or transposable elements (TE), and primarily through indirect methods that infer individual activity from bulk results. However,such techniques are not sensitive enough to determine precisely how or why the transposons jump, and what factors trigger their activity.
Source: phys.org