College of Animal Science & Technology, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu 225009, China.
Division of Medical Biotechnology, Paul Ehrlich Institute, Langen 63225, Germany.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2021 Feb 26;49(4):2126-2140. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkab045.
New genetic tools and strategies are currently under development to facilitate functional genomics analyses. Here, we describe an active member of the Tc1/mariner transposon superfamily, named ZB, which invaded the zebrafish genome very recently. ZB exhibits high activity in vertebrate cells, in the range of those of the widely used transposons piggyBac (PB), Sleeping Beauty (SB) and Tol2. ZB has a similar structural organization and target site sequence preference to SB, but a different integration profile with respect to genome-wide preference among mammalian functional annotation features. Namely, ZB displays a preference for integration into transcriptional regulatory regions of genes. Accordingly, we demonstrate the utility of ZB for enhancer trapping in zebrafish embryos and in the mouse germline. These results indicate that ZB may be a powerful tool for genetic manipulation in vertebrate model species.
新的遗传工具和策略目前正在开发中，以促进功能基因组学分析。在这里，我们描述了一个 Tc1/mariner 转座子超家族的活跃成员 ZB，它最近入侵了斑马鱼的基因组。ZB 在脊椎动物细胞中表现出很高的活性，与广泛使用的转座子 piggyBac (PB)、Sleeping Beauty (SB) 和 Tol2 的活性相当。ZB 的结构组织和靶序列偏好与 SB 相似，但在整合到哺乳动物功能注释特征的基因组范围内时，其整合模式有所不同。也就是说，ZB 显示出优先整合到基因转录调控区域的倾向。因此，我们证明了 ZB 在斑马鱼胚胎和小鼠生殖系中进行增强子捕获的实用性。这些结果表明，ZB 可能是在脊椎动物模式物种中进行遗传操作的有力工具。
