title: The FLP recombinase of the yeast 2-micron plasmid: characterization of its recombination site.
abstract: The minimal size of the recombination site required for efficient FLP recombinase-catalyzed recombination in vitro is no more than 28 base pairs, which includes parts of two 13-base-pair inverted repeats and all of an 8-base-pair spacer. The FLP recombinase cleaves the DNA at the boundaries of the spacer, becomes covalently linked to the spacer DNA via a 3' phosphate, and leaves a free 5' hydroxyl at the other end of the 8-base-pair spacer. The efficiency of recombination is reduced if the size of the spacer in a recombinant site is increased or decreased by 1 base pair, while the spacer in the second site is unaltered. Recombination between two sites with identical 1-base-pair additions or deletions in the spacer, however, is relatively unaffected. This result suggests that pairing of sequences in the spacer region is important in FLP-promoted recombination events. The sequence asymmetry utilized by the recombinase to determine the orientation of the site is located uniquely within the spacer region.
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D004254:DNA Nucleotidyltransferases / Q000378:metabolism*; D004262:DNA Restriction Enzymes; D004271:DNA, Fungal / Q000378:metabolism*; D010957:Plasmids; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000235:genetics; D013379:Substrate Specificity
chemical_list: D004271:DNA, Fungal; D004254:DNA Nucleotidyltransferases; C045119:FLP recombinase; D004262:DNA Restriction Enzymes