title: [Alu family and its biological significance].
abstract: The Alu family of short (approximately 300bp)interspersed elements (SINEs) is one of the most successful mobile genetic elements, having arisen to a copy number in excess of 500,000 within primate genomes in the last 65 million years. The proliferation of these elements had a significant impact on the architecture of primate genomes. Now the functions of Alu elements are still unclear. It is speculated that Alu elements are involved in aspects of gene regulation, e.g. gene rearrangement, CpG methylation, alternative splicing of hnRNA, binding sites of transcription factors and hormone receptors, etc. At the same time, Alu family is an important research method in human population genetics, forensic, oncology, etc. Additionally, Alu insertion, deletion and recombination led to many ancestor genetic diseases and cancers.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, Nanhua University, Hengyang 421001, China. luodixian_2@163.com
authors.forename: Di-Xian
authors.initials: DX
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Shu-Ya
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Duan-Fang
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Liao
mesh_terms: D020087:Alu Elements / Q000235:genetics*; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D018628:Gene Dosage; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D030342:Genetic Diseases, Inborn / Q000235:genetics; D005828:Genetics, Population / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data