- Durrant, Matthew G;
- Fanton, Alison;
- Tycko, Josh;
- Hinks, Michaela;
- Chandrasekaran, Sita S;
- Perry, Nicholas T;
- Schaepe, Julia;
- Du, Peter P;
- Lotfy, Peter;
- Bassik, Michael C;
- Bintu, Lacramioara;
- Bhatt, Ami S;
- Hsu, Patrick D
Large serine recombinases (LSRs) are DNA integrases that facilitate the site-specific integration of mobile genetic elements into bacterial genomes. Only a few LSRs, such as Bxb1 and PhiC31, have been characterized to date, with limited efficiency as tools for DNA integration in human cells. In this study, we developed a computational approach to identify thousands of LSRs and their DNA attachment sites, expanding known LSR diversity by >100-fold and enabling the prediction of their insertion site specificities. We tested their recombination activity in human cells, classifying them as landing pad, genome-targeting or multi-targeting LSRs. Overall, we achieved up to seven-fold higher recombination than Bxb1 and genome integration efficiencies of 40-75% with cargo sizes over 7 kb. We also demonstrate virus-free, direct integration of plasmid or amplicon libraries for improved functional genomics applications. This systematic discovery of recombinases directly from microbial sequencing data provides a resource of over 60 LSRs experimentally characterized in human cells for large-payload genome insertion without exposed DNA double-stranded breaks.