Diversity and strategies of environmental stress-responsive transposons in plants.

Copyright: ©2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons BY 4.0 International (Attribution) License (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), which permits the unrestricted distribution, reproduction and use of the article provided the original source and authors are credited. In this special issue, we survey the latest findings on the relationship between transposons and environmental stresses in plants. Transposons are mobile genes in the genomes of all organisms, not just plants. From their discovery in Zea mays (corn) to the present day, the biological importance of transposons has become increasingly clear. Transposon insertions not only cause mutations in genes essential to the organism but also affect various biological functions by altering gene expression patterns and transcript levels. This special issue focuses on the roles played by transposons in environmental stress responses in plants. The relationship between transposons and their host plants varies across plant species. Moreover, even within the same species, different types of transposons have distinct relationships with their hosts. Therefore, to understand the relationship between transposons and their hosts, it is necessary to understand the regulatory mechanisms of transposons in various species. In this issue of Genes & Genetic Systems, Yuji Kishima and colleagues, Tokuko Ujino-Ihara and I each review recently discovered environmental stress-responsive transposons and how they adopt diverse strategies. Transposon transposition is a driving force in genome evolution for host plants. Nevertheless, it is also a powerful source of mutation that is likely to be detrimental to survival. For this reason, transposons are usually silenced in the plant genome. However, it has been reported in many plants that transposons can be activated when environmental stimuli are applied. Kishima, Shasha Wang and Yohei Koide summarize the relationship between the transposition activity of Tam3, a DNA-type transposon of snapdragon, and lowtemperature stress. Tam3 has a unique set of properties that distinguish it from other transposons. Generally, transposons are synonymous with selfish factors. That is, transposons increase their copy number and move copies of themselves independently of the survival of the Diversity and strategies of environmental stress-responsive transposons in plants