Frog Prince: A highly active Transposon System for insertional mutagenesis and gene-trapping in Vertebrates

Reference Number TO 03-00125

 

The Challenge

 

Transposable elements are gene delivery vehicles whose integration into chromosomes provide the basis for long-term expression of transgenes in cells and organisms. They are valuable and widely used tools for insertional mutagenesis and germ-line transgenesis in invertebrate systems such as flies and worms.
“Sleeping Beauty” (SB) is currently the most active and useful transposon system in vertebrates. It shows transposition activity in a wide range of vertebrate cells and is well known in the scientific community as a molecular tool for vertebrate genetics and genome manipulations. As SB is not commercially available, there is a strong demand for an efficiently working transposon system, supplied on a commercial basis.

 

	Relative transpositional activity of Frog Prince (FP) in comparison to Sleeping Beauty (SB). FP shows higher activity in all different cell lines, e.g. 70% higher activity in zebrafish cells (HeLa, human; CHO-K1, hamster; A6, X. laevis; FHM, fathead minnow; PAC2, zebrafish).

 

The Technology

 

A novel transposon system called “Frog Prince” (FP) has been created, characterized by two main advantages over SB that have to be highlighted:
First, FP catalyses efficient cut-and-paste transposition in major vertebrate taxa like fish, amphibians and in mammalian cell lines with a higher transposition efficiency than SB (Fig. 1). In zebrafish cells FP shows an even 70% higher activity than SB.
Second, FP shows high-efficiency gene-trapping activity. Around 30% of all transposition events take place in introns of expressed genes. To our knowledge, such high gene trapping frequencies can not been obtained with other vector systems.

 

Commercial Opportunity

 

FP provides a valuable research tool to be developed and commercialised:

	commercially available transposon system for vertebrates
	efficient expression vector for vertebrate transgenesis
	an excellent vector for gene-trapping and insertional mutagenesis
	vector for generating stable siRNA cell lines or animals
	system for generation of expression, cDNA, and RNAi libraries

 

Patent situation

 

A priority claiming German application and a PCT application are pending.

 

Further Reading

 

Miskey et al., Nucleic Acids Research, 2003, Vol.31, No. 23, pp 6873-6881

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Contact:

Karen Uhlmann, Ph.D.
Technology Manager
Ascenion GmbH

T : +49 (0)30 94062301
F : +49 (0)30 94062302
E : uhlmann(at)ascenion.de