The past 15 years opened new avenues for retrovirus and retroelement research. Not surprisingly, they stemmed from essential knowledge collected in the past, which remains the ground of the present and therefore should be remembered. However, a short supplement of new break-through discoveries and ideas should be recollected. Using selected examples of recent works, I tried to extend and supplement my original article published in Folia Biologica (1996).

Institute of Molecular Genetics AS CR Vídenská 1083 142 20 Prague 4 Czech Republic

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Bejerano G, Lowe CB, Ahituv N, King B, Siepel A, Salama SR. et al.A distal enhancer and an ultraconserved exon are derived from a novel retroposon. Nature. 2006;441:87–90. doi: 10.1038/nature04696. PubMed DOI

Gladyshev EA, Arkhipova IR. Telomere-associated endonuclease-deficient Penelope-like retroelements in diverse eukaryotes. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2007;104:9352–9357. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0702741104. PubMed DOI PMC

Iskow RC, McCabe MT, Mills RE, Torene S, Pittard WS, Neuwald AF. et al.Natural mutagenesis of human genomes by endogenous retrotransposons. Cell. 2010;141:1253–1261. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.05.020. PubMed DOI PMC

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