Termination of packaging of the bacteriophage lambda chromosome: cosQ is required for nicking the bottom strand of cosN.

Termination of packaging of the lambda chromosome involves completion of translocation of the DNA into the head shell, and conversion of the translocation complex into a cleavage complex. The cleavage reaction introduces staggered nicks into the downstream cosN to generate the right cohesive end of the chromosome. cosQ, a site adjacent to cosN, was found to be required for nicking the bottom strand of cosN; bottom strand nicking was also sequence-specific for bps at the nick site. Nicking of the top strand of cosN (cosNL) was stimulated by cosQ, but fidelity and efficiency of cosNL nicking were largely dictated by other cos subsites (i.e. cosB and I2). Aberrant top-strand cleavage within cosQ was observed in the absence of I2, and nicking at a site 8 nt 5' to the normal cosNL nick site occurred in the absence of cosB. The presence of cosQ was found to be insufficient to arrest DNA translocation in vivo, indicating that cosQ, per se, is not a packaging stop signal. A model is presented in which the role of cosQ is to depolarize the asymmetric arrangement of terminase protomers in the translocation complex so that protomers are configured to match the 2-fold rotational symmetry of cosN.