Transposon tools for recombinant DNA manipulation: Characterization of transcriptional regulators from yeast, Xenopus, and mouse

Abstract

Transposon Tn1000 has been adapted to deliver novel DNA sequences for manipulating recombinant DNA. The transposition procedure for these 'tagged' Tn1000s is simple and applicable to most plasmids in current use. For yeast molecular biology, tagged Tn1000s introduce a variety of yeast selective markers and replication origins into plasmids and cosmids. In addition, the β-globin minimal promoter and lacZ gene of Tnβlac serve as a mobile reporter of eukaryotic enhancer activity. In this paper, Tnβlac was used to localize a mouse HoxB-complex enhancer in transgenic mice. Other tagged transposons create Gal4 DNA-binding-domain fusions, in either Escherichia coil or yeast plasmids, for use in one- and two-hybrid tests of transcriptional activation and protein-protein interaction, respectively. With such fusions, the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Swi6 G1/S-phase transcription factor and the Xenopus laevis Pintallavis developmental regulator are shown to activate transcription. Furthermore, the same transposon insertions also facilitated mapping of the Swi6 and Pintallavis domains responsible for transcriptional activation. Thus, as well as introducing novel sequences, tagged transposons share the numerous other applications of transposition such as producing insertional mutations, creating deletion series, or serving as mobile primer sites for DNA sequencing.