JB Accepts, published online ahead of print on 5 October 2007

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J. Bacteriol. doi:10.1128/JB.01451-07
Copyright (c) 2007, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Transposon Tn7 directs transposition into the genome of filamentous bacteriophage M13 using the element-encoded TnsE protein

Jessica A. Finn, Adam R. Parks, and Joseph E. Peters^*

Department of Microbiology, Cornell University

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: jep48{at}cornell.edu.

The bacterial transposon Tn7 has a pathway of transposition that preferentially targets conjugal plasmids. We propose that this same transposition pathway recognizes a structure or complex found during filamentous bacteriophage replication, likely by targeting negative-strand synthesis. The ability to insert into both plasmid and bacteriophage DNAs that are capable of cell-to-cell transfer would help explain the wide distribution of Tn7 relatives.