Expanding Flp-RMCE options: the potential of Recombinase Mediated Twin-Site Targeting (RMTT)

•For eukaryotic cells a minor portion of lentiviral insertions occurs apart from genes.•These target sites promote expression of the GOI — some in accord with GSH criteria.•If flanked by FRT twin sites, Flp-excision leaves back a unique, accessible FF′-tag.•Tagged clones lend themselves to multiple successive Flp-“RMTT” modifications.•Options comprise the serial introduction/elaboration of new expression cassettes.

Where possible, developments enabling the establishment of cell lines with predictable, long-term stable expression capacity are based on single-copy integrations at safe genomic loci with predictable properties. Robust performance could be assigned to lentiviral transduction systems anchoring single LV-units at sites with adequate transcription potential. In the case of gene therapeutic vectors it is essential that the expression interval can be safely terminated following individual requirements, which has mostly been achieved by lox-mediated excision (“floxing”). To extend the spectrum of possible applications we replaced the common, phage-derived Cre/loxP-setup by modules derived from the yeast “Flp/FRT” site-specific recombination system. This change enables a variety of additional options, for instance by “multiplexing” strategies, which rely on a variety of heterospecific FRT-site variants (F′). If we provide lentiviral LTRs with a “twin-site”, here an FF3 fusion, the presence of Flp-recombinase will effectively excise the expression cassette, leaving behind a single neutral, genomically anchored FF3 unit. This tag serves to identify the integration locus and to apply sequence- and structural (SIDD-) analyses to predict its functions. Candidate loci are then used to accommodate, at the given site, other genes of interest by “Recombinase-Mediated Twin Site Targeting” (RMTT), a contemporary extension of existing cassette exchange (RMCE-) routines. Supported by the fact that FF3 twins remain accessible within the host genome, RMTT provides access to certified cell lines as it complies with recently defined stringent genomic safe harbor criteria. Our discussion- and outlook-sections will cover lentiviral targeting strategies and current possibilities to enable their fine-tuning.

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