Stoichiometry of the Cre recombinase bound to the lox recombining site.
The site-specific recombinase Cre from bacteriophage P1 binds and carries out recombination at a 34 bp lox site. The lox site consists of two 13 bp inverted repeats, separated by an 8 bp spacer region. Both the palindromic nature of the site and the results of footprinting and band shift experiments suggest that a minimum of two Cre molecules bind to a lox site. We report here experiments that demonstrate the absolute stoichiometry of the Cre-lox complex to be one molecule of Cre bound per inverted repeat, or two molecules per lox site.
Mack
A
A
DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company, Experimental Station, Wilmington, DE 19880-0328.
Sauer
B
B
Abremski
K
K
Hoess
R
R
D001483:Base Sequence; D003090:Coliphages / Q000201:enzymology*; D004247:DNA / Q000378:metabolism*; D004252:DNA Mutational Analysis; D004254:DNA Nucleotidyltransferases / Q000378:metabolism*; D019426:Integrases; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D014764:Viral Proteins
D014764:Viral Proteins; D004247:DNA; C045073:Cre recombinase; D004254:DNA Nucleotidyltransferases; D019426:Integrases