By Levi Clancy for Student Reader on
Exon shuffling can lead to a common domain being found in a variety of proteins.
This shuffling around of mobile elements is thought to have had a profound influence on the evolution of genomes of multicellular organisms.
Via Non-Viral Retrotransposon
With non-viral retrotransposons, if a LINE has a weak poly(A) signal, then sometimes transcription will continue and include an adjacent 3' gene (eventually terminating at that gene's strong poly(A) signal).
ORF2 then reverse-transcribes the RNA transcript of the LINE and gene, eventually inserting the gene at a new location along with the SINE in a phenomenon known as exon shuffling.