Phage Integrases for Mediating Genomic Integration and DNA Recombination

Abstract

φC31 integrase is a site specific recombinase derived from the Streptomyces phage. In the phage lifecycle, the enzyme mediates lysogeny by mediating recombination between specific sequences termed attB (present in the bacterial DNA) and attP (present in the phage genome). Screening the enzyme activity in mammalian cells provided positive results and also showed that the enzyme retained its property of site specific recombination into mammalian genomes. Mammalian genomes have been shown to contain sequences that are similar to the wild type attP sequence of the Streptomyces phage genome and experiments with the integrase in mammalian cells showed that it could mediate recombination and subsequent integration of any DNA bearing an attB site into these pseudoattP sites. ...