Half a century after their discovery: Structural insights into exonuclease and annealase proteins catalyzing recombineering.

ABSTRACT: Recombineering is an essential tool for molecular biologists, allowing for the facile and efficient manipulation of bacterial genomes directly in cells without the need for costly and laborious in vitro manipulations involving restriction enzymes. The main workhorses behind recombineering are bacteriophage proteins that promote the single-strand annealing (SSA) homologous recombination pathway to repair double-stranded DNA breaks. While there have been several reviews examining recombineering methods and applications, comparatively few have focused on the mechanisms of the proteins that are the key players in the SSA pathway: a 5'→3' exonuclease and a single-strand annealing protein (SSAP or "annealase"). This review dives into the structures and functions of the two SSA recombinati

SUBMITTER: Fitschen LJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11611040 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature