Replicative transposition is a mechanism of transposition in
molecular biology, proposed by
James A. Shapiro in 1979,[1] in which the
transposable element is duplicated during the reaction, so that the transposing entity is a copy of the original element. In this mechanism, the donor and receptor DNA sequences form a characteristic intermediate "theta" configuration, sometimes called a "Shapiro intermediate".[2] Replicative transposition is characteristic to
retrotransposons and occurs from time to time in class II transposons.[3]
^Chaconas, George; Harshey, Rasika M. (2002), "Transposition of phage Mu DNA", in Craig, N. L.; Craigie, R.; Gellert, M.; Lambowitz, A. M. (eds.),
Mobile DNA II, American Society for Microbiology, pp. 384–402,
ISBN9781555812096.