Predicting Knot or Catenane Type of Site-Specific Recombination Products

Authors

Dorothy Buck, Imperial College London
Erica Flapan, Pomona CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Department

Mathematics (Pomona)

Publication Date

2007

Keywords

site-specific recombination, DNA knots, serine recombinases, tyrosine recombinases, DNA topology

Abstract

Site-specific recombination on supercoiled circular DNA yields a variety of knotted or catenated products. Here, we present a topological model of this process and characterize all possible products of the most common substrates: unknots, unlinks, and torus knots and catenanes. This model tightly prescribes the knot or catenane type of previously uncharacterized data. We also discuss how the model helps to distinguish products of distributive recombination and, in some cases, determine the order of processive recombination products.

Rights Information

© 2007 Elsevier B.V.

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

DOI

10.1016/j.jmb.2007.10.016

Recommended Citation

Dorothy Buck, Erica Flapan, Predicting Knot or Catenane Type of Site-Specific Recombination Products, Journal of Molecular Biology, Volume 374, Issue 5, 14 December 2007, Pages 1186-1199, ISSN 0022-2836, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2007.10.016. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002228360701337X)