If transposition is defined as the movement of genetic material, the retroviruses of eukaryotes provide an excellent system in which to study this phenomenon. They encode a cluster of genes that can easily be traced and manipulated. As the name suggests, the most common mode of transposition for retroviruses is via reverse transcription and integration of the resultant double-stranded DNA copy into cellular DNA (Taylor 1979). The movement of proviral DNA to a new site by this mode can occur either in the same cell that produced the virus (Sabran et al. 1979) or in another cell. It is not known whether an integrated provirus can transpose to another location without going through an RNA (viral) intermediate. However, studies on the endogenous retroviruses of chickens suggest that this might occur (Tereba et al. 1979; A. Tereba, pers. comm.).
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Skalka et al. (1981) studied this question.