Effects of insert size on transposition efficiency of the Sleeping Beauty transposon in mouse cells

Transposon vectors are widely used in prokaryotic and lower eukaryotic syst ems. However, they were not available for use in vertebrate animals until t he recent reconstitution of a synthetic fish transposon, Sleeping Beauty (S B). The reacquisition of transposability of the SE transposase fostered gre at enthusiasm for using transposon vectors as tools in vertebrate animals, particularly for gene transfer to facilitate accelerated integration of tra nsgenes into chromosomes. Here, we report the effects of insert sizes on tr ansposition efficiency of SE. A significant effect of insert size on effici ency of transposition by SE was found. The SE transposase enhanced the inte gration efficiency effectively for SE transposon up to approximately 5.6 kb , but lost its ability to enhance the integration efficiency when the trans poson size was increased to 9.1 kb. This result indicates that the SE trans poson system is highly applicable for transferring small genes, but may not be applicable for transferring very large genes.