Research progress on annotation and biological function of plant transposable elements

Transposable elements (TEs) are fragments of DNA that can move, copy, and re-integrate into a new site in the genome. In plants, many types of TEs, especially abundant long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons, can regulate gene expression in multiple ways, such as producing new genes and transcripts, providing regulatory elements, and changing gene structure. Ultimately, these changes promote plant genome evolution. At the same time, the rapid development of genome sequencing and assembly technology has provided a good opportunity for TE detection and annotation. In this review, we summarize current research progress on plant TEs from the perspectives of structural classification, whole-genome detection, functional research, and genome evolution. We also discuss future research directions and provide references for further plant TE study.