According to particular exemplary aspects, DNA target site binding and cleavage properties of native, variant or modified homing endonucleases (HE) (e.g., LAGLIDAG (LHE), HNH, His-Cys Box, GIY-YIG, I-SspI-type, and fusions, muteins or variants thereof) in solution are recapitulated on the cell surface (e.g., as assessed by flow cytometric analysis) to provide for novel cells expressing one or more cell surface HEs (e.g., expressing one or more HE binding and / or cleavage specificities), novel cell libraries, and high-throughput methods for assessing target site binding, target site cleavage. The rapid analysis of HE and LHE-DNA interactions on the cell surface with concurrent sorting options provides for high-throughput library screening affording rapid identification, analysis and isolation of novel HEs or LHEs having novel sequence specificities. Such novel sequence specificities, obtained by said methods provide novel methods for introducing targeted DNA-strand cleavage events, and novel chromatin immunoprecipitation methods (CHIP methods).