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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Semin Cancer Biol. 2010 May 15;20(4):261–268. doi: 10.1016/j.semcancer.2010.05.003

Figure 1.

Figure 1

The Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon system. Like all cut-and-paste transposons, the SB system requires two functional parts: the transposase enzyme (SBase) and the transposon vector. When these two elements are found within the same host cell nucleus, the SBase can bind to the inverted repeats (IRL and IRR) at the ends of the transposon, mediate excision of the transposon from the donor site and insertion into a new TA dinucleotide site. The TA site is duplicated and flanks each end of the transposon at the insertion site. The DNA breaks generated by the SBase at the donor site are repaired by the host cell. The repair often leaves behind a footprint (TACTGTA) at the donor site.