Bacterial transposon Tn5: evolutionary inferences

Transposable elements induce spontaneous mutations, promote genomerearrangements, regulate gene expression, and participate in the horizontalspread of genes encoding traits such as antibiotic resistance amongbacterial genera too distantly related to undergo homologous recombination.Here we review the bacterial transposon Tn5 and focus on those aspects ofits functional organization and transposition which provide insights intohow it and other elements may have arisen, proliferated, and evolved.