Arabinose inducible prokaryotic Cre recombinase expression plasmid.Site-specific recombinases (SSRs) like Cre or Dre are valuable tools in functional genomics and have been applied in various organisms. They mediate recombination between target sites of 32-34 base pairs (bp) in length. The target sites, which are called loxP or rox sites are 13-14 bp palindromes separated by spacers (see below).Cre recombinase, which was originally isolated from coliphage P1, mediates recombination between two loxP-sites through the spacer regions (e.g. removal of selectable genes). Dre was identified in a systematic search through P1-like phages for a Cre-like enzyme that had diverged sufficiently to recognize a recombination target site ( RT) that is distinct from loxP (Sauer and Mc Dermott, 2004).The combination of the arabinose inducible BAD promoter and the low-copy pSC101 plasmid backbone provide an excellent on-off regulation of Cre or Dre in E. coli as proved in a test experiment (Anastassiadis et al. 2009).The plasmids carry a tetracyclin resistance gene for selection and are compatible with plasmids based on a ColE1 or p15A origin of replication and an ampicillin or kanamycin resistance marker.While Cre/loxP is widely used in mouse genetics for conditional mutagenesis with many mouse lines available, a second highly efficient system like Dre/rox opens the door for more complex tasks such as a conditional mutagenesis of alternatively spliced exons. Cre/loxP can be used to remove one alternative exon and Dre/rox to remove the other one.ContentsRecombinase expression plasmid pSC101-BAD-Cre (0.2 ug/ul, 20 ul)Manual