Enhanced efficiency through nuclear localization signal fusion on phage PhiC31-integrase: activity comparison with Cre and FLPe recombinase in mammalian cells.

The integrase of the phage PhiC31 recombines an attP site in the phage genome with a chromosomal attB site of its Streptomyces host. We have utilized the integrase-mediated reaction to achieve episomal and genomic deletion of a reporter gene in mammalian cells, and provide the first comparison of its efficiency with other recombinases in a new assay system. This assay demonstrated that the efficiency of PhiC31-integrase is significantly enhanced by the C-terminal, but not the N-terminal, addition of a nuclear localization signal and becomes comparable with that of the widely used Cre/loxP system. Furthermore, we found that the improved FLP recombinase, FLPe, exhibits only 10% recombination activity on chromosomal targets as compared with Cre, whereas the Anabaena derived XisA recombinase is essentially inactive in mammalian cells. These results provide the first demonstration that a nuclear localisation signal and its position within a recombinase can be important for its efficiency in mammalian cells and establish the improved PhiC31-integrase as a new tool for genome engineering.

Rapid generation of inducible mouse mutants.

We have generated an optimized inducible recombination system for conditional gene targeting based on a Cre recombinase-steroid receptor fusion. This configuration allows efficient Cre-mediated recombination in most organs of the mouse upon induction, without detectable background activity. An ES cell line, was established that carries the inducible recombinase and a loxP-flanked lacZ reporter gene. Out of this line, completely ES cell-derived mice were efficiently produced through tetraploid blastocyst complementation, without the requirement of mouse breeding. Our findings provide a new concept allowing the generation of inducible mouse mutants within 6 months, as compared to 14 months using the current protocol.