The technique makes use of an Escherichia coli strain expressing the redΑßΓ operon under the control of an inducible promoter. This enables the strain to carry out homologous recombination with only 50-60 bp of homologous sequence. The procedure does not require any DNA ligation and is very rapid. It allows a single gene or region on a cosmid to be replaced by a bi-functional selectable marker (having both an E. coli and an A. fumigatus marker).
