Recent advances in large-scale transposon mutagenesis.

Abstract Transposons were identified as mobile genetic elements over fifty years ago and subsequently became powerful tools for molecular-genetic studies. Recently, transposon-mutagenesis strategies have been developed to identify essential and pathogenicity-related genes in pathogenic microorganisms. Also, a number of in vitro transposition systems have been used to facilitate genome sequence analysis. Finally, transposon mutagenesis of yeast and complex eukaryotes has provided valuable functional genomic information to complement genome-sequencing projects.