title: The Sleeping Beauty transposon toolbox.
abstract: The mobility of class II transposable elements (DNA transposons) can be experimentally controlled by separating the two functional components of the transposon: the terminal inverted repeat sequences that flank a gene of interest to be mobilized and the transposase protein that can be conditionally supplied to drive the transposition reaction. Thus, a DNA molecule of interest (e.g., a fluorescent marker, an shRNA expression cassette, a mutagenic gene trap or a therapeutic gene construct) cloned between the inverted repeat sequences of a transposon-based vector can be stably integrated into the genome in a regulated and highly efficient manner. Sleeping Beauty (SB) was the first transposon ever shown capable of gene transfer in vertebrate cells, and recent results confirm that SB supports a full spectrum of genetic engineering in vertebrate species, including transgenesis, insertional mutagenesis, and therapeutic somatic gene, transfer both ex vivo and in vivo. This methodological paradigm opened up a number of avenues for genome manipulations for basic and applied research. This review highlights the state-of-the-art in SB transposon technology in diverse genetic applications with special emphasis on the transposon as well as transposase vectors currently available in the SB transposon toolbox.
authors.affiliation: Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Ismahen
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ammar
authors.forename: Zsuzsanna
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Izsvák
authors.forename: Zoltán
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ivics
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements / Q000235:genetics*; D018014:Gene Transfer Techniques; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods; D015316:Genetic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D016254:Mutagenesis, Insertional; D019895:Transposases / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D019895:Transposases; C494471:sleeping beauty transposase, human