For about 25 years, geneticists have used P transposable elements to manipulate the Drosophila genome. The main drawback to the P element for genomic engineering is that it has strong hot- and cold-spots; that is, it inserts into certain genomic locations much more frequently than others. P elements tend to hop into the regulatory regions of genes and not the coding regions. Regulatory elements can often function normally even in the presence of a P insert, and so many P inserts result in little or no phenotype.

A newer transposon technology appears to bypass this problem. The Minos element was recently reported to insert into genes in a much more random fashion than the P element. This opens up new possibilities for performing genetic screens.

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