Faculty Collaboration Database

Gene transfer into genomes of human cells by the sleeping beauty transposon system. Mol Ther 2003 Jul;8(1):108-17

Date

07/05/2003

Pubmed ID

12842434

DOI

10.1016/s1525-0016(03)00099-6

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-0042700227 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   303 Citations

Abstract

The Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon system, derived from teleost fish sequences, is extremely effective at delivering DNA to vertebrate genomes, including those of humans. We have examined several parameters of the SB system to improve it as a potential, nonviral vector for gene therapy. Our investigation centered on three features: the carrying capacity of the transposon for efficient integration into chromosomes of HeLa cells, the effects of overexpression of the SB transposase gene on transposition rates, and improvements in the activity of SB transposase to increase insertion rates of transgenes into cellular chromosomes. We found that SB transposons of about 6 kb retained 50% of the maximal efficiency of transposition, which is sufficient to deliver 70-80% of identified human cDNAs with appropriate transcriptional regulatory sequences. Overexpression inhibition studies revealed that there are optimal ratios of SB transposase to transposon for maximal rates of transposition, suggesting that conditions of delivery of the two-part transposon system are important for the best gene-transfer efficiencies. We further refined the SB transposase to incorporate several amino acid substitutions, the result of which led to an improved transposase called SB11. With SB11 we are able to achieve transposition rates that are about 100-fold above those achieved with plasmids that insert into chromosomes by random recombination. With the recently described improvements to the transposon itself, the SB system appears to be a potential gene-transfer tool for human gene therapy.

Author List

Geurts AM, Yang Y, Clark KJ, Liu G, Cui Z, Dupuy AJ, Bell JB, Largaespada DA, Hackett PB

Author

Aron Geurts PhD Professor in the Physiology department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Blotting, Western
DNA Transposable Elements
DNA, Complementary
Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
Gene Transfer Techniques
Genome, Human
HeLa Cells
Humans
Mutagenesis, Site-Directed
Phylogeny
Plasmids
Protein Synthesis Inhibitors
Terminal Repeat Sequences
Transfection
Transgenes
Transposases