Real-Time Tracking and Quantification of Transposible Element Activity*

Transposable elements (TEs), or jumping genes, are DNA sequences that can change their position in a genome using a cut-and-paste or copy-and-paste mechanism. They are fundamental building blocks of all genomes, accounting for large fractions of genomic masses, and may have played a major role in the emergence of genetic diversity and function. Even so, many open questions remain regarding their differential abundance among organisms, the functions of their individual proteins, rates of protein activity and transposition and the effects of TEs on their hosts. To address these unanswered questions, we have constructed and released inducible TEs in bacteria to quantify their rates of activity and physiological effects on their hosts. To quantify dynamics, we've designed fluorescent visualization and quantification techniques to make real time high resolution observations of protein expression and transposition events as they occur in living cells. We show that we can obtain a deeper understanding of the roles of TEs and their individual proteins through our analysis.