Editorial

Welcome to Mobile DNA

Nancy L Craig¹ , Thomas H Eickbush² and Daniel F Voytas³

¹  Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

²  Department of Biology, University of Rochester River Campus, Rochester, New York, USA

³  Center for Genome Engineering, Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

author email corresponding author email

Mobile DNA 2010, 1:1doi:10.1186/1759-8753-1-1

Published:	25 January 2010

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

We are pleased to launch a new journal, Mobile DNA, at a time rich with opportunity for the study of mobile genetic elements. For more than a decade, our discipline has been well fed by data from the various genome sequencing efforts - data that continues to be generated at accelerating rates. Genome sequences have revealed novel element lineages that move by yet unknown mechanisms, providing subject matter for study by molecular biologists, biochemists and structural biologists. In species throughout the tree of life, genome sequences make evident the significant impact mobile elements have on genome organization, by creating genome rearrangements, mobilizing gene fragments, and reshaping the epigenetic landscape. At a mechanistic level, we continue to gain an appreciation for the intimate relationship between mobile elements and their hosts, and how mobile elements have adapted and responded to their hosts' cellular environment and regulatory pathways. Our research also has impact beyond our community, due to the many uses mobile elements provide as vectors for gene delivery and as mutagens that enable gene discovery.