Transposable elements are also important in bacterial genetics^33cubed. These chunks of DNA “jump” from one place to another within a genome, cutting and pasting themselves or inserting copies of themselves in new spots. Transposable elements are found in many organisms (including you and me!), not just in bacteria.
In bacteria, transposable elements sometimes carry antibiotic resistance and pathogenicity genes (genes that make bacteria disease-causing)^{4, 5,6}4,5,6start superscript, 4, comma, 5, comma, 6, end superscript. If one of these transposable elements “jumps” from the chromosome into a plasmid, the genes it carries can be easily passed to other bacteria by transformation or conjugation. That means the genes can spread quickly through the population.
One way that transposons can move around the genome is by copying themselves and inserting the copy into a new location. In this diagram, a transposon in the bacterial chromosome is copied and inserts into a plasmid.Image based on similar image in Reece et al. ^77