Abstract
BACKGROUND: Functional regulatory sequences are present in many transposable element (TE) copies, resulting in TEs being frequently exapted by host genes. Today, many examples of TEs impacting host gene expression can be found in the literature and we believe a new catalogue of such exaptations would be useful for the field. FINDINGS: We have established the catalogue of genes affected by transposable elements (C-GATE), which can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/tecatalog/. To date, it holds 221 cases of biologically verified TE exaptations and more than 10,000 in silico TE-gene partnerships. C-GATE is interactive and allows users to include missed or new TE exaptation data. C-GATE provides a graphic representation of the entire library, which may be used for future statistical analysis of TE impact on host gene expression. CONCLUSIONS: We hope C-GATE will be valuable for the TE community but also for others who have realized the role that TEs may have in their research.