Transposon Tn5: Specific Sequence Recognition and Conservative Transposition

Transposable elements are discrete DNA segments that move to new sites in a genome without requiring extensive DNA sequence homology (for reviews, see Kleckner 1981; Berg and Berg 1983; Shapiro 1983). The current interest in transposable elements can be attributed to: (1) their ubiquity; (2) the novel DNA sequence recognition, cleavage, and joining reactions that their movement entails; (3) the insertion mutations, genome rearrangements, and changes in gene expression they cause; (4) their roles in genome evolution; and finally (5) their usefulness in the genetic analysis and manipulation of many different organisms.