The Tol2 element of the medaka fish Oryzias latipes belongs to the hAT family of transposons (hobo/Ac/Tam3). We report here identification of a functional transposase of Tol2 that is capable of catalyzing its transposition in the germ line of zebrafish Danio rerio. A transcript produced from Tol2 encodes a putative transposase. Zebrafish fertilized eggs were coinjected with mRNA transcribed in ...

The Tol2 transposable element of the Japanese medaka fish belongs to the hAT family of transposons including hobo of Drosophila, Ac of maize, and Tam3 of snapdragon. To date, Tol2 is the only natural transposon in vertebrates that has ever been shown to encode a fully functional transposase. It has not been known, however, whether Tol2 can transpose in vertebrates other than fish. We report her...

A nonviral vector for highly efficient site-specific integration would be desirable for many applications in transgenesis, including gene therapy. In this study we directly compared the genomic integration efficiencies of piggyBac, hyperactive Sleeping Beauty (SB11), Tol2, and Mos1 in four mammalian cell lines. piggyBac demonstrated significantly higher transposition activity in all cell lines ...

Gene delivery to the lung has rapidly progressed as an important method for studying various chronic lung diseases. Viral vectors, albeit highly efficient, are limited by the host immune response. Electroporation, a well-known non-viral method, can efficiently deliver genes to the lung, but is unable to induce stable gene expression. The Tol2 transposon is another non-viral method that can indu...

Transposons are mobile genetic elements that are capable of self-directed excision and subsequent reintegration within the host genome. Transposase such as piggyBac, Sleeping Beauty and Tol2 catalyze these reactions and have shown potential as tools for the stable integration of transgenes when used in the binary plasmid mode. Recent modifications to the transposase and/or the terminal repeats ...

BACKGROUND DNA transposons have emerged as indispensible tools for manipulating vertebrate genomes with applications ranging from insertional mutagenesis and transgenesis to gene therapy. To fully explore the potential of two highly active DNA transposons, piggyBac and Tol2, as mammalian genetic tools, we have conducted a side-by-side comparison of the two transposon systems in the same setting...

Genomic deletions induced by imprecise excision of transposons have been used to disrupt gene functions in Drosophila. To determine the excision properties of Tol2, a popular transposon in zebrafish, we took advantage of two transgenic zebrafish lines Et(gata2a:EGFP)pku684 and Et(gata2a:EGFP)pku760, and mobilized the transposon by injecting transposase mRNA into homozygous transgenic embryos. F...

The Sleeping Beauty (SB), piggyBac (PB) and Tol2 transposons are promising instruments for genome engineering. Integration site profiling of SB, PB and Tol2 in human cells showed that PB and Tol2 insertions were enriched in genes, whereas SB insertions were randomly distributed. We aimed to introduce a bias into the target site selection properties of the transposon systems by taking advantage ...