Molecular Biology of the Gene 7th Edition by Richard Losick, James Watson, Michael Levine, Tamara Baker, Alexander Gann

Exercise 9

Explain why scientists use transposons like Tn5 as a genetic engineering tool to screen a population of bacterial or yeast cells for mutants for a given phenotype. Why does the presence of the transposon in the mutant provide an experimental advantage in a genetic screen, compared to mutations generated by chemical mutagenesis?