Mobile DNA: Finding Treasure in Junk

14. L1 encodes an endonuclease

Now it was Boeke’s turn to re-enter the story and add luster to it. Although I was now working in Philadelphia at Penn, my wife and I still resided in our house in North Baltimore. I would take the train to Philadelphia twice a week and spend two or three nights per week in an apartment close to the University. Because I was in Baltimore anyway on Monday mornings, on a few occasions I attended Boeke’s regular weekly Monday lab meeting. In addition, on a few occasions, Jef would join me in a 2–3 mile jog on Sunday morning. On one of those occasions, I told him about John’s success with the cell culture assay of human L1 retrotransposition. Jef was now branching out from studies on the yeast Ty1 retrotransposon to ...