Topic summary
Transposon
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Transposable element.
The Sleeping Beauty transposon system
The first synthetic transposon designed for use in vertebrate (including human) cells, the Sleeping Beauty transposon system, is a Tc1/mariner-like transposon. Its dead ("fossil") versions are spread widely in the salmonid genome and a functional version was engineered by comparing those versions. Human Tc1-like transposons are divided into Hsmar1 and Hsmar2 subfamilies. Although both types are inactive, one copy of Hsmar1 found in the SETMAR gene is under selection as it provides DNA-binding for the histone-modifying protein. Many other human genes are similarly derived from transposons. Hsmar2 has been reconstructed multiple times from the fossil sequences.