Molecular Biologist Sofie Salama: The Story of Jumping Genes

It's not just organisms that compete in nature—molecules do, too. Sofie Salama and colleagues have been exploring an age-old tug-of-war inside our genome, between genes that spread like kudzu and others that perform a kind of weed control. The conflict between jumping genes (aka transposons), and repressors may have a biological payoff, contributing new regulatory elements that drive organismal complexity and new evolutionary possibilities. Among the subjects Sofie and I discussed: *The pioneering work of Barbara McClintock, discoverer of transposons *The possible viral origins of jumping genes *Do transposons hurt us or help us? *Watching the intragenomic “arms race” in action *There's so much more to the genome than genes *Combinatorial complexity: how a modest number of genes give rise to much more complicated systems *Epigenetics: beyond classical inheritance