Retrotransposons in animal regeneration: Overlooked components of the regenerative machinery?

Research on the involvement of retroelements in developmental processes has been gaining momentum recently; however, most of the studies published so far have been focused on embryonic development. This commentary presents two recent papers, which document significant changes in transcriptional activity of retroelements in two different model systems, salamander limb regeneration and regeneration of radial organs in the sea cucumber . We hypothesize that transcriptional activity of the retrotransposons can be specifically controlled by the host and may play some hitherto unrecognized role in regeneration.