Unusual retrotransposon from the yeast Candida albicans

摘要

TCa2 is a Tyl/copia retrotransposon from the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans. In contrast to other retrotransposons it can appear as an abundant, extrachromosomal double-stranded DNA molecule, called pCal. The invention relates to the isolation and characterisation of TCa2 and pCal together with its uses for inducing random mutagenesis in a genome, as a component of a transposable element and of an expression vector.