An Overview of Tyrosine Site-Specific Recombination: from an Flp Perspective
An Overview of Tyrosine Site-specific Recombination: From an Flp Perspective MAKKUNI JAYARAM,1 CHIEN-HUI MA,1 AASHIQ H KACHROO,1 PAUL A ROWLEY,1 PIOTR GUGA,2 HSUI-FANG FAN,3 and YURI VOZIYANOV4 1Department of Molecular Biosciences, UT Austin, Austin, TX 78712; 2Centre of Molecular and Macromolecular Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Department of Bio-organic Chemistry, Lodz, Poland; 3Department of Life Sciences and Institute of Genome Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei 112, Taiwan; 4School of Biosciences, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA 71272 ABSTRACT Tyrosine site-specific recombinases (YRs) are prokaryotes. They were thought to be nearly absent widely distributed among prokaryotes and their viruses, and among eukaryotes, the budding yeast lineage (Saccharo- fi were thought to be con ned to the budding yeast lineage mycetaceae) being an exception in that a subset of its among eukaryotes. However, YR-harboring retrotransposons members houses nuclear plasmids that code for YRs (the DIRS and PAT families) and DNA transposons (Cryptons) have been identified in a variety of eukaryotes. The YRs utilize (1, 2). However, YR-harboring DIRS and PAT families a common chemical mechanism, analogous to that of type IB of retrotransposons and presumed DNA transposons topoisomerases, to bring about a plethora of genetic classified as Cryptons have now been identified in a rearrangements with important physiological consequences large number of eukaryotes (3, 4). The presence of in their respective biological contexts. A subset of the tyrosine functional YRs encoded in Archaeal genomes has been recombinases has provided model systems for analyzing the established by a combination of comparative genomics chemical mechanisms and conformational features of the and modeling complemented by biochemical and struc- recombination reaction using chemical, biochemical, topological, structural, and single molecule-biophysical tural analyses (5, 6).
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