Comment by ajhammer
17 hours ago
This is a good summary of what was going on. I kept reading the paper hoping for a cool wrinkle or function to be revealed, but it's just conserved, highly transcribed array sitting next to reverse transcriptases with a few possible partner genes.
A side note, Matt Durrant has hit on some pretty exciting recombinase activity previously (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07552-4). If there's anyone who's well equipped to track down if ART is doing something cool, he's top of the list.
Sorry, but isn't a "conserved, highly transcribed array sitting next to reverse transcriptases" in itself the description of an unknown mechanism? If two parts are combined and conserved and we know what each means but not why they're combined and conserved then it's pretty intriguing, no?