In gene transposition an entire gene functions as a transposon and transposes itself to the beginning of the chromosome. In contrast to the other forms of transposition, in gene transposition, the transposon (the gene) is deleted at the place of origin.

Apparently, gene transposition is only capable of shuffling genes and, for ETs linked by commutative functions, this contributes nothing to adaptation in the short run. However, gene transposition is very important when coupled with recombination (see section 3.3), for it allows not only the duplication of genes but also a more generalized recombination of genes or smaller building blocks.

This operator randomly chooses the chromosome to undergo gene transposition, and randomly chooses one of its genes (except the first, obviously) to transpose. Consider the following chromosome composed of 3 genes:

Suppose gene 3 was chosen to undergo gene transposition. Then the following chromosome is obtained:

Note that for numerical applications where the function chosen to link the genes is commutative, the expression evaluated by the chromosome is not modified. But the situation differs in other applications where the linking function is not commutative, for instance, the IF function chosen to link sub-ETs in Boolean problems. Note that, in those cases, gene transposition has a very drastic effect, generating most of the times nonviable individuals.