The yeast Srs2 helicase removes Rad51 nucleoprotein filaments from single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), preventing DNA strand invasion and exchange by homologous recombination. This activity requires a physical interaction between Srs2 and Rad51, which stimulates ATP turnover in the Rad51 nucleoprotein filament and causes dissociation of Rad51 from ssDNA. Srs2 also possesses a DNA unwinding activity an...

Homologous recombinational repair (HRR) of DNA damage is critical for maintaining genome stability and tumor suppression. RAD51 and BRCA2 colocalization in nuclear foci is a hallmark of HRR. BRCA2 has important roles in RAD51 focus formation and HRR of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). We previously reported that BCCIPalpha interacts with BRCA2. We show that a second isoform, BCCIPbeta, also int...

Homologous recombination (HR) is one of the main pathways for the repair of DNA double strand breaks (DSBs). To investigate whether inherited variants in genes encoding proteins that repair DSBs by HR modulate acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) risk, we have examined the frequency of two variants in the 5' untranslated region (UTR) of RAD51 (RAD51 135 G>C and the RAD51 172 G>T) in a large case-contr...

The SRS2 (Suppressor of RAD Six screen mutant 2) gene encodes an ATP-dependent DNA helicase that regulates homologous recombination in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mutations in SRS2 result in a hyper-recombination phenotype, sensitivity to DNA damaging agents and synthetic lethality with mutations that affect DNA metabolism. Several of these phenotypes can be suppressed by inactivating genes of th...

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae Rdh54 protein is a member of the Swi2/Snf2 family of DNA translocases required for meiotic and mitotic recombination and DNA repair. Rdh54 interacts with the general recombinases Rad51 and Dmc1 and promotes D-loop formation with either recombinase. Rdh54 also mediates the removal of Rad51 from undamaged chromatin in mitotic cells, which prevents formation of nonreco...

Rad51 protein forms nucleoprotein filaments on single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) and then pairs that DNA with the complementary strand of incoming duplex DNA. In apparent contrast with published results, we demonstrate that Rad51 protein promotes an extensive pairing of long homologous DNAs in the absence of replication protein A. This pairing exists only within the Rad51 filament; it was previously ...

Chronic myeloid leukemia chronic phase (CML-CP) CD34(+) cells contain numerous DNA double-strand breaks whose unfaithful repair may contribute to chromosomal instability and disease progression to blast phase (CML-BP). These phenomena are often associated with the appearance of imatinib-resistant BCR-ABL1 kinase mutants (eg, T315I) and overexpression of BCR-ABL1. Here we show that BCR-ABL1 (non...

The Rad51 recombinase is an essential factor for homologous recombination and the repair of DNA double strand breaks, binding transiently to both single stranded and double stranded DNA during the recombination reaction. The use of a homologous recombination mechanism to repair DNA damage is controlled at several levels, including the binding of Rad51 to single stranded DNA to form the Rad51 nu...

RAD51, the eukaryote homolog of the Escherichia coli recA recombinase, participates in homologous recombination during mitosis, meiosis, and in the repair of double-stranded DNA breaks. The Tetrahymena thermophila RAD51 gene was recently cloned, and the in vitro activities and induction of Rad51p following DNA damage were shown to be similar to that of RAD51 from other species. This study descr...

Rates of Mu transposon insertions and excisions are both high in late somatic cells of maize. In contrast, although high rates of insertions are observed in germinal cells, germinal excisions are recovered only rarely. Plants doubly homozygous for deletion alleles of rad51A1 and rad51A2 do not encode functional RAD51 protein (RAD51-). Approximately 1% of the gametes from RAD51+ plants that carr...