Gerald Mayer Rubin (born 1950) is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the Drosophila melanogaster genome.
Short RNAs are well-known to silence TEs (transposable elements) through the RNAi (RNA interference) pathway, and Piwi-associated RNAs (piRNAs) play a crucial role in transposon silencing in the germline.
The construction for the transposase began by fusing portions of two inactive transposon sequences from Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and one inactive transposon sequence from rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and then repairing small deficits in the functional domains of the transposase enzyme (Fig. 3).