Integrase Class Site‐specific Recombinases

John J Scocca, The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Published online: April 2001

DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0001059

The integrase family of recombination proteins promote coordinated conservative DNA breakage–rejoining reactions at duplex DNA sites of defined sequence. They ensure accurate partition of duplicated circular prokaryotic chromosomes or insert and remove temperate phage genomes from host chromosomes through formation of a DNA–integrase phosphodiester linkage between a tyrosyl residue and a 3¢-phosphoryl group.

Keywords: tyrosine recombinases; mobile genetic elements; bacteriophage; covalent catalysis; topoisomerases

Figure 1. Site-specific recombination by integrases proceeds via a four-stranded Holliday intermediate. The strands are coloured for clarity. The sites at which reactions occur are shown as blue blocks.
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 References
    Chen JW, Yang SH and Jayaram M (1993) Tests for the fractional active-site model in Flp site-specific recombination. Assembly of a functional recombination complex in half-site and full-site strand transfer. Journal of Biological Chemistry 268: 14417–14425.
    Esposito D and Scocca JJ (1997) The integrase family of tyrosine recombinases: evolution of a conserved active site domain. Nucleic Acids Research 25: 3605–3614.
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    Hickman AB, Waninger S, Scocca JJ and Dyda F (1997) Molecular organization in site-specific recombination. The catalytic domain of HP1 integrase at 2.7 angstrom resolution. Cell 89: 227–237.
    Kwon HJ, Tirumalai R, Landy A and Ellenberger T (1997) Flexibility in DNA recombination: structure of the lambda integrase catalytic core. Science 276: 126–131.
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    book Nash HA (1996) "Site-specific recombination: integration, excision, resolution, and inversion of defined DNA segments". In: Neidhardt FC (ed.) Escherichia coli and Salmonella. Cellular and Molecular Biology, pp. 2330–2376. Washington DC: American Society for Microbiology.
    Nunes-Duby SE, Kwon HJ, Tirumalai RS, Ellenberger T and Landy A (1998) Similarities and differences among 105 members of the Int family of site-specific recombinases. Nucleic Acids Research 26: 391–406.
    Subramanya HS, Arciszewska LK, Baker RA et al. (1997) Crystal structure of the site-specific recombinase XerD. EMBO Journal 16: 5178–5187.
 Further Reading
    Bayley CC, Morgan M, Dale EC and Ow DW (1992) Exchange of gene activity in transgenic plants catalyzed by the Cre-lox site-specific recombination system. Plant Molecular Biology 18: 353–361.
    Craig NL (1988) The mechanism of conservative site-specific recombination. Annual Review of Genetics 22: 77–105.
    Grindley NDF (1997) Site-specific recombination: Synapsis and strand exchange revealed. Current Biology 7: R608–R612.
    Hall RM and Collis CM (1995) Mobile gene cassettes and integrons: capture and spread of genes by site-specific recombination. Molecular Microbiology 15: 593–600.
    Landy A (1989) Dynamic, structural, and regulatory aspects of lambda site-specific recombination. Annual Review of Biochemistry 58: 913–949.
    Landy A (1993) Mechanistic and structural complexity in the site-specific recombination pathways of Int and FLP. Current Opinion in Genetics and Development 3: 699–707.
    Sadowski PD (1995) The Flp recombinase of the 2-microns plasmid of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Progress in Nucleic Acid Research and Molecular Biology 51: 53–91.
    Sherratt DJ, Arciszewska LK, Blakely G et al. (1995) Site-specific recombination and circular chromosome segregation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B (Biological Sciences) 347: 37–42.

Related Sub-Topics:

Protein Structure | Nucleic Acid Structure | Replication and Recombination | DNA Structure and Function | DNA Damage and Repair | Biomolecular Interactions | Enzymes: Structure and Action Mechanism | Nucleic Acids: Structure, Function, Metabolism
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Article Title: Integrase Class Site‐specific Recombinases
 
How to Cite close
Scocca, John J(Apr 2001) Integrase Class Site‐specific Recombinases. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1038/npg.els.0001059]