{"doi":"10.7554/elife.50004","title":"Casposase structure and the mechanistic link between DNA transposition and spacer acquisition by CRISPR-Cas","abstract":"Key to CRISPR-Cas adaptive immunity is maintaining an ongoing record of invading nucleic acids, a process carried out by the Cas1-Cas2 complex that integrates short segments of foreign genetic material (spacers) into the CRISPR locus. It is hypothesized that Cas1 evolved from casposases, a novel class of transposases. We show here that the Methanosarcina mazei casposase can integrate varied forms of the casposon end in vitro, and recapitulates several properties of CRISPR-Cas integrases including site-specificity. The X-ray structure of the casposase bound to DNA representing the product of integration reveals a tetramer with target DNA bound snugly between two dimers in which single-stranded casposon end binding resembles that of spacer 3'-overhangs. The differences between transposase and CRISPR-Cas integrase are largely architectural, and it appears that evolutionary change involved changes in protein-protein interactions to favor Cas2 binding over tetramerization; this in turn led to preferred integration of single spacers over two transposon ends.","journal":"eLife","year":2020,"id":75847,"datarank":1.0614665794387745,"base_score":3.1354942159291497,"endowment":3.1354942159291497,"self_citation_contribution":0.47032413238937254,"citation_network_contribution":0.5911424470494021,"self_endowment_contribution":0.47032413238937254,"citer_contribution":0.5911424470494021,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":22,"citer_count":22,"citers_with_citation_signal":19,"citers_with_endowment":19,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9522,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"GEO":["GSE139037"],"PDB":["6OPM"]},"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":395751,"name":"Shweta Kailasan","orcid":"0000-0003-0876-6812","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":395752,"name":"Pavol Genzor","orcid":"0000-0002-3316-5659","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":395753,"name":"Astrid D. Haase","orcid":"0000-0003-1120-9013","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":291212,"name":"Fred Dyda","orcid":"0000-0003-1689-9041","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":291210,"name":"Alison B. Hickman","orcid":"0000-0001-7666-0249","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":54,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:46:55.856612Z","pmid":"31913120","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}