The amplification dynamics of MITEs and their impact on rice trait variability

MITEs are present in plant genomes in high copy numbers and are tightly associated to genes. The analysis of MITE dynamics presented here highlights their importance in rice domestication and breeding. We show that MITEs uncover more associations with agronomic traits than SNPs when used in GWAS, which highlights both their importance as drivers of genetic variability and their usefulness for association studies. Finally, our results provide new insights on the still obscure amplification mechanism of MITEs.