Transcriptional control of IS1 transposition in Escherichia coli

The movement of the bacterial insertion sequence IS1 often generates cointegrate structures in which donor and target replicons are connected by direct repeats of IS1. The experiments reported here were designed to understand how IS1 transposition is controlled. Our physical characterization of the structures of cointegrates between an F factor ( pOX38 ) and a set of pBR322::Tn9-related plasmids indicate that the relative mobilities of the two IS1 elements of Tn9 are inversely correlated with the strength of promoters upstream in the vector DNA. This implies that transcription across the ends of an IS1 element inhibits its transposition. Transcriptional inhibition may be due to interference with either the synthesis or the action of transposase.