Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on January 9, 2009
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkn1025
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Genomics |
Passport, a native Tc1 transposon from flatfish, is functionally active in vertebrate cells
1Department of Animal Science at the University of Minnesota, St Paul, MN 55108, 2The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for Transposon Research at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, 3Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK and 4The University of Minnesota Animal Biotechnology Center, Saint Paul, MN 55108, USA
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 612 670 2078; Fax: +1 612 625 2743; Email: fahre001{at}umn.edu
Received August 5, 2008. Revised December 2, 2008. Accepted December 9, 2008.
The Tc1/mariner family of DNA transposons is widespread across fungal, plant and animal kingdoms, and thought to contribute to the evolution of their host genomes. To date, an active Tc1 transposon has not been identified within the native genome of a vertebrate. We demonstrate that Passport, a native transposon isolated from a fish (Pleuronectes platessa), is active in a variety of vertebrate cells. In transposition assays, we found that the Passport transposon system improved stable cellular transgenesis by 40-fold, has an apparent preference for insertion into genes, and is subject to overproduction inhibition like other Tc1 elements. Passport represents the first vertebrate Tc1 element described as both natively intact and functionally active, and given its restricted phylogenetic distribution, may be contemporaneously active. The Passport transposon system thus complements the available genetic tools for the manipulation of vertebrate genomes, and may provide a unique system for studying the infiltration of vertebrate genomes by Tc1 elements.
Present address: Karl J. Clark, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 55902, USA