Tn7 family bacterial transposons known for tightly controlled target site selection are distributed across Asgard and archaeal groups https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.27.667033v1

Moreover, we found eukaryotic-like DNA-binding domains in several archaeal elements, suggesting they could serve as scaffolds for new genome engineering tools! 🧩

We show that these archaeal Tn7-like transposons mirror their bacterial counterparts, and even successfully reconstituted an element from a “Ca. Heimdallarchaeota archaeon” in the lab. 🧪

Several of these are in the Asgard group (!!), where the branch point with eukaryotes is believed to reside. 😱

My first co–first author paper with the amazing PoPo @popomicro.bsky.social is now on bioRxiv ! 🧬

We found that Tn7-like transposons - known for finding specific insertion sites before they jump - aren’t just in bacteria. They're in archaea distributed across all major superphyla!