Reciprocality of Recombination Events That Rearrange the Chromosome

We describe a genetic system for studying the reciprocality of chromosomal recombination; all substrates and recombination functions involved are provided exclusively by the bacterial chromosome. The genetic system allows the recovery of both recombinant products from a single recombination event. The system was used to demonstrate the full reciprocality of three different types of recombination events: (1) intrachromosomal recombination between direct repeats, causing deletions; (2) intrachromosomal recombination between inverse homologies, causing inversion of a segment of the bacterial chromosome; and (3) circle to circle recombination (in the absence of any plasmid or phage functions). Results suggest that intrachromosomal recombination in bacteria is frequently fully reciprocal.