Bestor Timothy H
Department of Genetics and Development, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, New York, New York 10032, USA.
Cell. 2005 Aug 12;122(3):322-5. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2005.07.024.
Transposons have proved valuable in the genetic modification of many organisms but not mammals. New work reported by Ding et al. (2005) in this issue of Cell and by Collier et al. (2005) and Dupuy et al. (2005) in a recent issue of Nature now reveals that insertional mutagenesis in mammalian cells is possible thanks to modified derivatives of the piggyBac and Sleeping Beauty DNA transposons. However, the slow rate of proliferation of DNA transposons suggests that derivatives of the L1 retrotransposon might be more powerful for mutagenesis of germline cells. In either case, the future of transposon-driven genetic analyses of mice and other mammals looks promising.
转座子已被证明在许多生物体的基因改造中很有价值，但在哺乳动物中并非如此。丁等人（2005年）在本期《细胞》杂志上发表的新研究，以及科利尔等人（2005年）和迪皮伊等人（2005年）在最近一期《自然》杂志上发表的研究，现在揭示了由于piggyBac和睡美人DNA转座子的修饰衍生物，哺乳动物细胞中的插入诱变是可能的。然而，DNA转座子增殖速度缓慢表明，L1逆转录转座子的衍生物可能对生殖细胞的诱变更有效。无论哪种情况，转座子驱动的小鼠和其他哺乳动物基因分析的前景看起来都很广阔。
