Integrons are genetic mechanisms that allow bacteria to adapt and evolve rapidly through the stockpiling and expression of new genes.
[1] These genes are embedded in a specific genetic structure called gene cassette (a term that is lately changing to integron cassette) that generally carries one promoterless open reading frame (ORF) together with a recombination site (attC).
[2] Indeed, these mobile integrons, as they are now known, can carry a variety of cassettes containing genes that are almost exclusively related to antibiotic resistance.
Further studies have come to the conclusion that integrons are chromosomal elements, and that their mobilisation onto plasmids has been fostered by transposons and selected by the intensive use of antibiotics.
The term super-integron was first applied in 1998 (but without definition) to the integron with a long cassette array on the small chromosome of Vibrio cholerae.