View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UCrea 1 The Conjugative Relaxase TrwC Promotes Integration of Foreign 2 DNA in the Human Genome 3 4 5 Coral González-Prieto,a Richard Gabriel,b Christoph Dehio,c Manfred Schmidt,b 6 and Matxalen Llosa,a# 7 8 Instituto de Biomedicina y Biotecnología de Cantabria (UC-CSIC-SODERCAN), 9 Santander, Spaina; Department of Translational Oncology, National Center for Tumor 10 Diseases and German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germanyb, Focal Area 11 Infection Biology, Biozentrum, Universität Basel, Basel, Switzerland 12 13 14 Running head: TrwC promotes DNA integration in the human genome 15 16 # Address correspondence to Matxalen LLosa,
[email protected] 17 1 18 ABSTRACT 19 20 Bacterial conjugation is a mechanism of horizontal DNA transfer. The relaxase 21 TrwC of the conjugative plasmid R388 cleaves one strand of the transferred DNA at the 22 oriT, covalently attaches to it and leads the ssDNA into the recipient cell. In addition, 23 TrwC catalyzes site-specific integration of the transferred DNA into its target sequence 24 present in the genome of the recipient bacterium. Here, we report the analysis of the 25 efficiency and specificity of the integrase activity of TrwC in human cells, using the 26 Type IV Secretion System of the human pathogen Bartonella henselae to introduce 27 relaxase-DNA complexes. When compared to Mob relaxase from plasmid pBGR1, we 28 found that TrwC mediated a 10-fold increase in the rate of plasmid DNA transfer to 29 human cells, and a 100-fold increase in the rate of chromosomal integration of the 30 transferred DNA.