It is possible that a first monomer of XerS binds to the left part of the difSL site and then immediately recruits a second monomer that will then be able to bind on the right part of the difSL site to form a complex on the DNA. The binding is cooperative, and at lower concentrations of proteins, binding of

a second XerS to the right half could be stabilizing the complex to prevent dissociation of XerS. The XerS protein is able to form covalent complexes with both top strand–nicked and bottom strand–nicked DNA substrates, which are formed after cleavage of the dif site. Using either 5′ or 3′-labelled suicide substrates, the bottom-nicked substrate is cleaved preferentially. In a surprising finding, the points of XerS-mediated cleavage indicate that the central region of the difSL site is comprised of an 11-bp spacer, as compared to the 6–8-bp central region found in most tyrosine recombinase recombination sites. Although

learn more an 11-bp spacer region has never observed in classic XerCD/dif systems, a 12-bp spacer has been observed in XerC-mediated phage CTX integration in Vibrio (Val et al., 2005). It is not likely that the additional N-terminal MBP moiety is responsible for this enlarged spacer region, as the catalytic residues responsible for cleavage lie at the C-terminus of XerS, and previous work with XerCD recombinases (with a 6-bp spacer region) has shown that recombinases with an N-terminal MBP region still cleave DNA at the same positions as those without MBP fusions (Blakely et al., Protein kinase N1 1997, 2000; Neilson selleck chemical et al., 1999). This suggests that the difSL site of S. suis can be split in three regions, a left binding site (ATTTTTCCGAA), a central spacer (AAACTATAATT) and a right binding site (TTCTTGAAA). The two putative binding sites are asymmetric, as the putative left binding site is two nucleotides longer. But previous experiments indicate that the XerS protein also binds DNA

outside of the conserved difSL sequence in a non-sequence-specific manner (Nolivos et al., 2010), which probably compensates for the shorter binding site. Comparison of the difSL left half-site (ATTTTTCCGAA) with the reverse complement of the right half-site (TTTCAAGAA) shows conserved TTTC and GAA motifs, separated by a single nucleotide for the left site and two nucleotides for the right half-site. It is possible that the recombinase contacts the DNA at the consensus, but the additional nucleotide at the right half-site may hinder XerS binding without the help of a XerS monomer bound to the left half-site to either bend the DNA or change the conformation of the second XerS monomer to allow binding. This asymmetric mode of binding could also activate the monomer bound to the right half-site and is a likely explanation for the preferential cleavage of the bottom strand–nicked substrate (Fig. 2a) and the preferential exchange of the bottom strand (Nolivos et al., 2010). Inactivation of the S.