Retroelements (REs) comprise about 50% of  human genome. REs contain many regulatory elements and propagate in the genome through the process called retrotransposition. Retroelements are known to affect neighboring genes expression and can cause major genomic rearrangements. Many of recent RE integrations are not fixed in the genome and display considerable polymorphism in human population. RE insertion polymorphism is often used as a molecular markers for human population genetics and for medical genetics studies. Polymorphic REs offer considerable advantages over other types of polymorphisms. Thirst the presence of RE represents identity by descent since the probability that two different RE were independently integrated in the same site is neglible. Second RE insertion are stable, since there is now genetic mechanism for RE excision from the genome. Third RE polymorphisms are easily detected experimentally.

PRED is the first internet database in RE containing information about polymorphic retroelements and their use as modern molecular genetic markers. Here you can search for essential molecular markers for various population and medical genetics studies.

PRED allows to carry out a search for polymorphic RE insertion with particular features essential for the researcher. These features include RE sequence, location in human genome frequency of insertion in human populations information about nearest genes and their relative position. Additionally the database contain information on every single polymorphic retroelement with the reference to the original research paper.

Here you can download the database and the search tool for your local server. Microsoft.NET Framework Version 2.0 is also required to run the search tool (available here). All the programes are FREE.