Tn611 Transposon Mutagenesis in Mycobacterium smegmatis Using a Temperature-Sensitive Delivery System

Mobile generic elements are discrete DNA fragments encoding their own transposltlon functions, which enable them to move from one site in the DNA to another, independently of host-recombination functions (such as RecA). Recombination by transposition occurs without homology between the sequences of the transposon and the target sequence (1 ). Moreover, most of these elements do not exhibit a strong specificity for the target-site sequence, thus allowing these elements to be widely used for mutagenesis in bacteria (2 ).