New research is showing that P transposable elements have some interesting insertion site hotspots. Specifically, in the fly genome these transposons often show up in the promoter region of a few hundred seemingly unrelated genes. One common theme, however, is that many of the P element target sites serve as starting points for the DNA replication process that creates a duplicate copy of the genome prior to cell division. So there is a correlation, in this case, between the transposon insertion site preference and DNA replication. This finding has implications for how the P elements spread through a population. And it is yet another indication of, in contrast to evolution’s it’s-all-just-a-random-fluke view, how much really goes on under the hood. But this new twist on insertion site preferences also reminds us of evolution’s pretzel logic. Read more