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Tangle analysis of Gin site-specific recombination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2004

MARIEL VAZQUEZ  and
DE WITT SUMNERS
MARIEL VAZQUEZ
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3840, U.S.A. e-mail: mariel@math.berkeley.edu
DE WITT SUMNERS
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4510, U.S.A. e-mail: sumners@math.fsu.edu
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Abstract

We use the tangle model to study the action of the site-specific recombinase Gin, an enzyme that can introduce topological changes on circular DNA molecules. Gin and its bound DNA are modelled as a 2-string tangle which undergoes changes during recombination, thereby changing the topology of the DNA substrate. We show that the tangles involved in the analysis are all rational tangles. This technique allows us to prove that, under the model's assumptions, there is a unique topological description of the enzymatic action. The Gin system is one of the few to date where tangle analysis can be carried out systematically and rigorously, yielding a single, biologically reasonable solution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society , Volume 136 , Issue 3 , May 2004 , pp. 565 - 582
Copyright
2004 Cambridge Philosophical Society

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