Abstract
Little is known about how foreign DNA is randomly integrated into chromosomes in transgenic animals. In the current study, the insertion sites of 36 transgenic mice were mapped by thermal asymmetric interlaced PCR, and 38 junction sequences were obtained from 30 samples. Analysis of the 38 sequences revealed that 44.7 % of integration events occurred within host gene regions, including 13.2 % (5/38) in exonic regions and 31.6 % (12/38) in intronic regions. The results also revealed that all non-end side integrations of foreign DNA were mediated by short sequence homologies (microhomologies) and that the end side integrations occurred in the presence or absence of microhomologies. In addition, microhomology-mediated mechanisms were also confirmed in four transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana lines. The results indicate that foreign DNA is easily integrated into host gene regions. These results also suggest that the integration of both ends of foreign DNA follows the above-mentioned mechanism in many transgenic/transformed organisms.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Dr. Andrew Bassett at University of Oxford for his valuable comments and suggestions on manuscript. The plant DNA was a gift from Professor Tao Wang and Dr. Jiang-li Dong in our college. The work was supported by National Major Special Project on New Varieties Cultivation for Transgenic Organisms in China (grant numbers 2008ZX08008-003, 2009ZX08006-011B) and Chinese Universities Scientific Fund (grant number 2011JS106).
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Yan, BW., Zhao, YF., Cao, WG. et al. Mechanism of random integration of foreign DNA in transgenic mice. Transgenic Res 22, 983–992 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-013-9701-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-013-9701-z