J. Bacteriol., Oct 1996, 5813-5816, Vol 178, No. 19
Copyright © 1996, American Society for Microbiology

Conjugative transposon Tn916: evidence for excision with formation of 5'-protruding termini

R Manganelli, S Ricci and G Pozzi
Dipartimento di Biologia Molecolare, Sezione di Microbiologia, Universita di Siena, Italy. rmangane@bgsm.edu

Conjugative transposons are genetic elements able to promote their own intracellular transposition and intercellular conjugal transfer. They move by an excision-integration system related to that of lambdoid phages, in which the first step is the excision of the transposon from the donor replicon to form a covalently closed circular intermediate which contains a heteroduplex joint. In this work, sequencing both strands of the circular intermediate heteroduplex joint, it was found that, as during lambda phage excision, Tn916 excises from the host DNA by 5'-protruding staggered endonucleolytic cleavages.

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