Transposable Elements at the Crossroads of Evolution, Health and Disease (F2)
September 3-6, 2023  | Fairmont Chateau Whistler, Whistler, BC, Canada
Kathleen H. Burns, Harmit S. Malik and Irina Arkhipova
Scholarship Deadline: Jun. 1, 2023 | Abstract Deadline: Jun. 1, 2023 | Early Registration Deadline: Jul. 6, 2023
* Session Chair † Invited but not yet accepted | Program current as of September 12, 2025 8 AM | For the most up-to-date details, visit https://www.keystonesymposia.org
Sunday, September 3, 2023
10:00–2:00 PM Arrival and Registration Macdonald Foyer
12:00–2:00 PM Welcome Mixer Macdonald Foyer
Monday, September 4, 2023
1:00–2:00 AM Breakfast Macdonald EF
2:00–3:00 AM Welcome and Keynote Address MacDonald CD
  * Kathleen H. Burns, Dana Farber Cancer Institute | Harvard Medical School
Session Chair		  
  Cedric Feschotte, Cornell University
Transposon Addiction		  
3:00–5:15 AM In Sickness and in Health: Transposons in Disease, Immunology, and Therapeutics MacDonald CD
  * Kathleen H. Burns, Dana Farber Cancer Institute | Harvard Medical School
Session Chair		  
  Vera Gorbunova, University of Rochester
Transposable Elements in Aging		  
  E. Alice Lee, Boston Children's Hospital & Harvard Medical School
Transposable Elements in Neurobiology		  
  Nancy L. Craig, SalioGen Therapeutics
Targeted Transposition for Gene Therapy		  
  Joshua Dubnau, Stony Brook University School of Medicine
Short Talk: Short Talk: Endogenous Retroviruses and TDP-43 Proteinopathy Form a Sustaining Feedback Driving Intercellular Spread of Neurodegeneration		  
3:30–3:50 AM Coffee Break Macdonald Foyer
5:15–7:00 AM Poster Setup Macdonald EF
5:15–11:00 AM On Own for Lunch
7:00–4:00 PM Poster Viewing Macdonald EF
8:30–10:30 AM Workshop 1: TEs as Friends, Foes or Both MacDonald CD
  * Henry L. Levin, NIH
Session Chair		  
  Henry L. Levin, NIH
Removal of Retrotransposons by LTR-LTR Recombination Impairs Stress Response		  
  Sonya A Widen, IMBA
Virus-like Transposons Cross the Species Barrier and Drive the Evolution of Genetic Incompatibilities		  
  Grace YC Lee, University of California, Irvine
Epigenetic Silencing of Transposable Elements Drives Variation in Recombination Landscapes		  
  Khalil Kashkush, Ben-Gurion University
Where the Wild Things Are: Transposable Elements as Drivers of Structural and Functional Variations in the Wheat Genome		  
  Panpan Zhang, Cornell University
SAT-TEs: A Hidden Source of Human Genomic and Regulatory Variation		  
  Jean-David Larouche, Université de Montréal
Transposable Elements Regulate Thymus Development and Function		  
  Boxun Zhao, Boston Children's Hospital
Contribution and Therapeutic Implications of Transposable Elements in Genetic Diseases		  
  Alexandra Whiteley, University of Colorado, Boulder
Regulation and role of the domesticated retrotransposon, PEG10, in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)		  
10:30–11:00 AM Coffee Available Macdonald Foyer
11:00–1:00 PM Genomic Battlegrounds: Evolutionary Conflicts and Arms Races in the Mobilome MacDonald CD
  * Harmit S. Malik, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Session Chair		  
  Harmit S. Malik, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Indel’ible Evolutionary Landscapes of Host-virus Arms Races		  
  Zhao Zhang, Duke University
Chasing the Jumping Genes		  
  Amanda Larracuente, University of Rochester
Dynamic Evolution of Centromere-associated Retroelements and Satellite DNAs		  
  Caroline Langley, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Short Talk: Short Talk: Structural and Evolutionary Constraints on HIV-1 Vif in the Context of Antiviral APOBEC3 Proteins		  
  Josien van Wolfswinkel, Yale University
Short Talk: Short Talk: Transposable Elements in Regulation of Planarian Stem Cells		  
1:00–2:00 PM Social Hour with Lite Bites Macdonald EF
1:30–4:00 PM Poster Session 1 Macdonald EF
Tuesday, September 5, 2023
1:00–2:00 AM Breakfast Macdonald EF
2:00–5:00 AM Epigenomics and Epitranscriptomics of Transposition and Interactions with the Environment MacDonald CD
  * Irina Arkhipova, Marine Biological Laboratory
Session Chair		  
  Haruhiko Siomi, Keio University School of Medicine
Embryonic Development Requires Transposon Expression		  
  Magnus Nordborg, Gregor Mendel Institute
Population Dynamics of Transposable Elements in Arabidopsis		  
  Alexei A. Aravin, California Institute of Technology
Short Talk: Short Talk: Molecular Mechanisms of De Novo Formation and Trapping of Transposon Insertions by piRNA Clusters		  
  Sharon Schlesinger, The Hebrew University
Short Talk: Short Talk: Insights into Retroviral Silencing: Smarcad1 Facilitates H3.3 Deposition on Retroviral Sequences in Embryonic Stem Cells		  
  Jeffrey Hyacinthe, McGill University
Short Talk: Short Talk: Transposable Elements Impact the Regulatory Landscape Through Cell Type Specific Epigenome Associations		  
  Cristina Tufarelli, University of Leicester
Short Talk: Short Talk: LCT13b, a Transcript Driven by the Antisense Promoter of a Retrotransposition Deficient L1PA2, has Functional Roles in Colon Cancer		  
  Irina Arkhipova, Marine Biological Laboratory
Reverse Transcriptase-Related Genes at the Intersection of Environmental Stress Responses		  
3:00–3:20 AM Coffee Break Macdonald Foyer
5:00–7:00 AM Poster Setup Macdonald EF
5:00–11:00 AM On Own for Lunch
7:00–4:00 PM Poster Viewing Macdonald EF
9:00–10:30 AM Career Roundtable MacDonald CD
  Nancy L. Craig, SalioGen Therapeutics
Senior Vice President of Genetic Engineering and Mobile Elements		  
  Henry L. Levin, NIH
Senior Investigator		  
  Amanda Larracuente, University of Rochester
Associate Professor		  
10:30–11:00 AM Coffee Available Macdonald Foyer
11:00–1:00 PM Transposon Domestication and Co-Option at the DNA, RNA and Protein Levels MacDonald CD
  * Edward B. Chuong, University of Colorado Boulder
Session Chair		  
  Alan M. Lambowitz, University of Texas at Austin
Domestication and Applications of Bacterial Reverse Transcriptases		  
  Miguel Branco, Queen Mary University of London
Placental Gene Regulation by Transposable Elements		  
  Edward B. Chuong, University of Colorado Boulder
Immune Signaling Regulation by Transposon Exonization		  
  Rachel Cosby, National Institutes of Health
Short Talk: Short Talk: The Host-transposase Fusion THAP7 is a Transcription Factor Implicated in Vertebrate Development and Human Intellectual Disability		  
  Azra Lari, University of California, Berkeley
Short Talk: Short Talk: Gammaherpesvirus Infection Induced B2 SINE Retrotransposon Activation Drives mRNA Isoform Switching		  
1:00–2:00 PM Social Hour with Lite Bites Macdonald EF
1:30–4:00 PM Poster Session 2 Macdonald EF
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
1:00–2:00 AM Breakfast Macdonald EF
2:00–5:00 AM Transposable Elements in Cancer MacDonald CD
  * Dixie L. Mager, British Columbia Cancer Agency
Session Chair		  
  Kathleen H. Burns, Dana Farber Cancer Institute | Harvard Medical School
LINE-1 Expression and Retrotransposition in Cancer		  
  John V. Moran, University of Michigan Medical School
Studies of a Human Retrotransposon		  
  Ting Wang, Washington University
Transposable Elements in 3D Genome Evolution		  
  Katherine Chiappinelli, George Washington University
Targeting Transposable Elements to Reverse Cancer Immune Evasion		  
  Martin Taylor, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Short Talk: Short Talk: Structures and Activities of Human LINE-1 ORF2 Protein Reveals Novel Adaptations and Functions		  
  Siyu Sun, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Short Talk: Short Talk: Cancer Cells Co-evolve with Retrotransposons to Mitigate Viral Mimicry		  
3:00–3:20 AM Coffee Break Macdonald Foyer
5:00–11:00 AM On Own for Lunch
8:30–10:30 AM Workshop 2: Bioinformatic and Multi-omic Tools MacDonald CD
  * Arian F.A. Smit, Institute for Systems Biology
Session Chair		  
  Clément Goubert, McGill University / University of Arizona
GraffiTE: A Unified Framework to Analyze Transposable Element and Repeat-derived Structural Variants Using Pan-genome Graphs		  
  Xiaoyu Zhuo, Washington University at St. Louis
Characterizing CpG Methylation of Polymorphic TE Insertions in Human Using Third-generation Sequencing		  
  Jun Ding, McGill University
MATES: A Deep Learning-Based Model for Quantifying Transposable Elements in Single-Cell Sequencing Data		  
  Matthew L. Bendall, Weill Cornell Medicine
Single Cell Retrotranscriptomics with Stellarscope: Developing a Single Cell Transposable Element Atlas of Human Cell Identity		  
  Bo Zhang, Washington University In St. Louis
Using TSRdetector to Quantify TE-derived Transcripts at the Single Cell Type Level		  
  Bimala Acharya, Iowa State University
Hunting for Helitrons with Genome-wide Identification of Trans-duplicate Genes		  
  Anubhuti Mathur, Tessera Therapeutics
Writing Large DNA Sequences into the Genome with Engineered Gene Writers		  
  Asiya Gusa, Duke University School of Medicine
TE Mobility in Serial Isolates of Cryptococcus from Patients with Recurrent Cryptococcal Meningitis		  
10:30–11:00 AM Coffee Available Macdonald Foyer
11:00–1:00 PM Structural and Mechanistic Underpinnings of Transposition across the Kingdoms of Life MacDonald CD
  * Orsolya Barabas, European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Session Chair		  
  Orsolya Barabas, European Molecular Biology Laboratory
DNA Folding and Sequence Asymmetry Promote Conjugative Transposition of Antibiotic Resistance Between Diverse Bacteria		  
  Phoebe A. Rice, University of Chicago
Large Serine Integrases: How do they know which way to go?		  
  Jeff F. Miller, University of California, Los Angeles
Accelerated Protein Evolution by Diversity-Generating Retroelements		  
  Elizabeth Kellogg, Cornell University
Short Talk: Short Talk: Mechanisms of RNA-guided DNA Transposition		  
  Alba Guarne, McGill University
Short Talk: Short Talk: Structural Basis for Targeting and Immunity of the Tn7 Transposon		  
1:00–1:15 PM Meeting Wrap-Up: Outcomes and Future Directions (Organizers) MacDonald CD
1:15–2:15 PM Social Hour with Lite Bites Macdonald EF
2:15–3:00 PM Cash Bar Macdonald EF
Thursday, September 7, 2023
1:00–5:59 PM Departure