Table II.6. Applications of site-specific recombination to different functions in bacterial cells. (Hallet and Sherratt 1997)

Integrate infecting viral genomes, which can later be excised by site-specific recombination (Groth and Calos 2004; Smith, Brown et al. 2010).

Integrate horizontally transferred DNA segments (genomic islands) (Manson and Gilmore 2006; Wilde, Mazel et al. 2008; Juhas, van der Meer et al. 2009).

Integrate and excise single-protein coding cassettes for antibiotic resistance and other cell properties into expression structures called “integrons”  or (in the case of very large structures encoding diverse proteins) “super-integrons” (Hall and Collis 1995; Rowe-Magnus, Guérout et al. 1999; Rowe-Magnus, Guerout et al. 2002; Rowe-Magnus and Mazel 2002).

Separating intermediate structures in the movement of DNA transposons (Derbyshire and Grindley 1986; Brown and Evans 1991; Olorunniji and Stark 2010).

Resolve tandemly repeated chromosomes and smaller replicons into two separate molecules for proper distribution to daughter cells (Barre, Soballe et al. 2001; Sherratt, Soballe et al. 2004).

Resolve replicated telomeres on prokaryotic linear chromosomes (Kobryn and Chaconas 2001; Tourand, Lee et al. 2007; Chaconas and Kobryn 2010).

Invert DNA segments to regulate transcription (see Table II.5).

Invert DNA segments to alter protein coding sequences (see Table II.5).

Excise “DNA introns” to permit the expression of specialized functions in terminally differentiated bacterial cells (see Table II.5).