Effects of insert size on transposition efficiency of the Sleeping Beautytransposon in mouse cells

摘要

Transposon vectors are widely used in prokaryotic and lower eukaryotic systems. However, they were not available for use in vertebrate animals until the recent reconstitution of a synthetic fish transposon, Sleeping Beauty (SB). The reacquisition of transposability of the SE transposase fostered great enthusiasm for using transposon vectors as tools in vertebrate animals, particularly for gene transfer to facilitate accelerated integration of transgenes into chromosomes. Here, we report the effects of insert sizes on transposition efficiency of SE. A significant effect of insert size on efficiency of transposition by SE was found. The SE transposase enhanced the integration efficiency effectively for SE transposon up to approximately 5.6 kb, but lost its ability to enhance the integration efficiency when the transposon size was increased to 9.1 kb. This result indicates that the SE transposon system is highly applicable for transferring small genes, but may not be applicable for transferring very large genes.