“睡美人( Sleeping Beauty, SB) ”转座系统是Tc1/mariner 转座子超家族中的一员,已经失活了一千多万年。1997年，Ivics 等根据积累的系统发生数据,利用生物信息学的方法, 对其进行分子重建, 终于唤醒了其转座活性。近年来对“睡美人”转座系统的转座效率和转座机理进行的研究，已证明SB转座子在基因筛选，转基因及基因治疗等领域具有广阔的应用前景。文章重点论述了SB转座子在结构及其优化、转座机制和应用等方面的进展，同时对其研究中出现的各种问题进行了总结并提出了一些解决方案。

The Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon is a Tc1/mariner family transposon that has been transpositionally inactive for over 10 million years. The SB transposon system was awakened from inactiveTc1-like transposable elements by using molecular phylogenetic data in 1997. Recent studies on its transposition efficiency and mechanism have shown its broad applications in vertebrate animals for gene-screening, gene transfer, and human gene therapy. In this review, we summarize our current knowledge of Sleeping Beauty, such as structure, transposition mechanism and potential applications, and bring forward some means aiming at the limitations of transposon technology.