Question: Can you make mutants with transposons?

Richard Badge answered on 15 Jun 2011:

Hi kabence1997

Yes, absolutely, mutagenesis (making mutants) is a major application for transposons…

For example a number of research teams at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute are using a transposon called PiggyBac (transposon biologists have fun with names!) to mutate genes in mice. They are doing this to see what diseases the mice get when the transposon breaks (mutates) a gene.

In one study they are specifically trying to find genes that cause cancer, in addition to the ones that are already known about. This is directly relevant to human disease because knowing what genes are mutated in mouse cancers can help us study human cancer.

In another study they are using transposons to make mouse cells that can be encouraged to turn into any tissue in the body (heart, brain, skin), also known as stem cells. The big advanatage of transposons over the viruses that used be used is that the transposon can be precisely removed after turning the cells into stem cells, leaving jus a normal cell.

You can read more about this work at: http://www.sanger.ac.uk/research/projects/mousegenomics/

In my lab we study active human transposons and although they do very occasionally cause human disease by mutating genes this is very much rarer than cancer…

Richard