Transposon technology and vertebrate functional genomics 英文参考文献.docVIP

Meeting report Transposon technology and vertebrate functional genomics Wenfeng An and Jef D Boeke Address: Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and High Throughput Biology Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. Correspondence: Jef D Boeke. E-mail: jboeke@ Published: 2 December 2005 Genome Biology 2005, 6:361 (doi:10.1186/gb-2005-6-12-361) The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2005/6/12/361 ? 2005 BioMed Central Ltd The Sleeping Beauty transposon A report on the Third Annual International Conference on A star of both meetings was the Sleeping Beauty (SB) DNA Transposition and Animal Biotechnology, Minneapolis, USA, 23- transposon, a vertebrate member of the Tc1/mariner family 24 June 2005, and the FASEB Summer Research Conference that was resurrected from defective ancient elements through ‘Mammalian Mobile Elements’, Tuscon, USA, 4-9 June, 2005. site-directed mutagenesis in 1997. SB is typically used as a two-component system: one component is a gutted transpo- son carrying a reporter gene(s) and/or other molecular bells Transposons are mobile genetic elements with the ability to move to new sites in host genomes. This mobility gives them awesome potential as genome-altering tools for somatic and germline mutagenesis, and as gene-delivery tools in the lab- oratory and for gene therapy. Two meetings on transposons this summer, in Minneapolis and Tucson, revealed the impressive progress in this field, with emphasis on trans- posons in vertebrates. The following report describes a few of the highlights from these meetings. and whistles, flanked by the inverted repeats containing transposase-binding sites; the second is the SB transposase expressed under the control of a heterologous promoter, which is necessary and sufficient for transposition. The trans- position process is not, however,