Abstract
Carcinogenesis is based on acquiring the mutations that will trigger and maintain the malignant cellular growth. According to the widely accepted concept, these mutations are single-nucleotide variants, and environmental factors mainly generate them. In this chapter, we describe an alternative understanding based on the human genome’s internal capacity to generate structural variants within the “dark matter” of the human genome. The “dark matter” of the genome contains transposable elements (TEs) that can transpose and generate mutations in the genomes. These de novo variants affect the functioning of the genome and are the leading cause of the aberrant transcription that is the basis of many, if not most, of the complex diseases. In this chapter, I focus on the impact of TEs on cancer development.