The cover of this issue of Biochemical Society Transactions features an illustration of programmed DNA elimination events which are present across diverse clades along the tree of life. Yet known PDE events involve different machineries. This suggests that PDE evolved multiple times independently, suggesting that this convergent evolution must have underlying evolutionary advantages. In this review, the authors provide an overview of the known biological roles of programmed elimination of DNA in the various organisms, followed up by the molecular mechanisms that enable the discrimination of retained and eliminated sequences. Read more in ‘Functions and mechanisms of eukaryotic RNA-guided programmed DNA elimination’ from Stefanov and Nowacki here: https://doi.org/10.1042/BST20253006