Characterization of the site-specific recombination system of phage ΦD145, and its capacity to promote recombination in human cells

Phage integrases have the potential of becoming tools for safe site-specific integration of genes into unmodified human genomes. The P2-like phages have been found to have different bacterial host integration sites and consequently they have related integrases with different sequence specificities. In this work the site-specific recombination system of the P2-like phage ΦD145 is characterized. The minimal attB site is determined to 22 nt with 18 nt identity to the core region of attP. A non-coding sequence on the human chromosome 13 is shown to be a rather good substrate for recombination in vivo in bacteria as well as in a plasmid system in HeLa cells when HMG protein recognition sequences are inserted between the left arm-binding site and the core in the complex phage attachment site attP. Thus ΦD145 integrase that belongs to the tyrosine family shows potential as a tool for site-specific integration into the human genome.