Akademik

Transposon
A short mobile DNA sequence that can replicate and of which copies can be inserted at random sites within chromosomes. A transposon has almost identical sequences at each end and inverted repeat sequences (that run in the opposite direction). It codes for the enzyme, transposase, that catalyses its insert in the chromosome.
* * *
A segment of DNA ( e.g., an R-factor gene) which has a repeat of an insertion sequence element at each end that can migrate from one plasmid to another within the same bacterium, to a bacterial chromosome, or to a bacteriophage; the mechanism of transposition seems to be independent of the host's usual recombination mechanism. See jumping gene, transposable element. [L. transpono, pp. transpositum, to transfer, + -on]

* * *

trans·po·son .tran(t)s-'pō-.zän n a transposable element esp. when it contains genetic material controlling functions other than those related to its relocation

* * *

trans·po·son (tranz-poґzon) a transposable element that carries additional genes, such as for drug resistance, besides merely those for transposition, particularly a complex one occurring in prokaryotes. The term, however, is sometimes used interchangeably with transposable element.

Medical dictionary. 2011.