A new study by Huang and Kobryn shows that mutating just two amino acids can convert the bacterial telomere resolvase TelA into a Cre-like site-specific recombinase. The finding reveals a surprisingly simple route for switching enzyme function.
Hairpin telomere resolvases comprise a family of enzymes that produce the hairpin (hp) telomeres of bacteria and their phages that possess linear chromosomes and plasmids terminated by covalently…
