Retroposon

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A fragment of DNA inserted into a chromosome following reverse transcription from RNA.

    "The best-known retroposons are “copia” and the families similar to copia, which were discovered in Drosophila but are also found in many other animals and even in yeast and higher plants, and the similarly ubiquitous foldback (FB) element, "THE1" in humans and "VL30" in rats and mice."

Example

More examples

"The best-known retroposons are “copia” and the families similar to copia, which were discovered in Drosophila but are also found in many other animals and even in yeast and higher plants, and the similarly ubiquitous foldback (FB) element, "THE1" in humans and "VL30" in rats and mice."

Etymology

From retropose + -on.

Related phrases

reverse transcription

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.