CONJUGATIVE TRANSPOSON TN916 - EVIDENCE FOR EXCISION WITH FORMATION OF 5'-PROTRUDING TERMINI

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 ph ages, in which the first step is the excision of the transposon from t he donor replicon to form a covalently closed circular intermediate wh ich contains a heteroduplex joint, In this work, sequencing both stran ds 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.