Figure 1. Mechanism of cut-and-paste transposition.
The transposon is a self-contained mobile genetic element containing a transposase coding sequence (orange box) flanked by terminal inverted repeats (TIRs; thick black arrows on the left and right). Transcriptional regulatory elements, including a promoter (small arrow) and polyA site (light blue box) regulate the expression of the transposase (orange spheres). Transposase molecules bind to the TIRs and catalyze the movement of the transposase to a new chromosomal location.