It has been 10 years since the introduction of modern transposon-insertion sequencing (TIS) methods, which combine genome-wide transposon mutagenesis with high-throughput sequencing to estimate the fitness contribution or essentiality of each genetic component in a bacterial genome. Four TIS variations were published in 2009: transposon sequencing (Tn-Seq), transposon-directed insertion site sequencing (TraDIS), insertion sequencing (INSeq) and high-throughput insertion tracking by deep sequencing (HITS). TIS has since become an important tool for molecular microbiologists, being one of the few genome-wide techniques that directly links phenotype to genotype and ultimately can assign gene function. In this Review, we discuss the recent applications of TIS to answer overarching biological questions. We explore emerging and multidisciplinary methods that build on TIS, with an eye towards future applications.

自引入现代转座子插入测序 (TIS) 方法已有 10 年，该方法将全基因组转座子诱变与高通量测序相结合，以估计细菌基因组中每个遗传成分的适应性贡献或重要性。2009 年发表了四种 TIS 变体：转座子测序 (Tn-Seq)、转座子定向插入位点测序 (TraDIS)、插入测序 (INSeq) 和通过深度测序进行的高通量插入跟踪 (HITS)。此后，TIS 已成为分子微生物学家的重要工具，是为数不多的将表型与基因型直接联系起来并最终可以分配基因功能的全基因组技术之一。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了 TIS 最近在回答总体生物学问题方面的应用。