Disease relevance of O2ColV157

• The phiBT1 phage integrase is an enzyme that catalyses the efficient recombination between unique sequences in the phage and bacterial genomes, leading to the site-specific integration of the former into the latter in a unidirectional manner [1].
• The remaining sequence consists largely of complete and incomplete insertion sequences, prophage sequences, and an intact phage integrase gene that is located directly downstream of the chromosomal selC [2].

High impact information on O2ColV157

• Here we showed that this phage integrase functions efficiently in mouse cells, and several naturally occurring pseudo-attP sites located in the intergenic regions of the mouse genome have been identified and molecularly characterized [1].
• We further demonstrated that the addition of nuclear localization signal sequences to the C terminus of the phage integrase enhanced the efficiency for transgene integration into the mouse genome [1].
• Bacteriophage attachment sites and cryptic genes on Pais, which are homologous to phage integrase genes, plasmid origins of replication of IS elements, indicate that these particular genetic elements were previously able to spread among bacterial populations by horizontal gene transfer, a process known to contribute to microbial evolution [3].
• The authors report here that phage Phi42 encodes a restriction-modification (R-M) system, termed Sau42I, adjacent to and in the same orientation to the phage integrase gene int [4].

References