The only difference between the reactions in (A) and B) is the relative orientation of the two DNA sites (indicated by arrows) at which a site-specific recombination event occurs. (A) Through an integration reaction, a circular DNA molecule can become incorporated into a second DNA molecule; by the reverse reaction (excision), it can exit to reform the original DNA circle. Bacteriophage lambda and other bacterial viruses move in and out of their host chromosomes in precisely this way. (B) Conservative site-specific recombination can also invert a specific segment of DNA in a chromosome. A well-studied example of DNA inversion through site-specific recombination occurs in the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium, an organism that is a major cause of food poisoning in humans; the inversion of a DNA segment changes the type of flagellum that is produced by the bacterium (see Figure 7-64).