The RAD51 protein has been shown to participate in homologous recombination by promoting ATP-dependent homologous pairing and strand transfer reactions. In the present study, we have investigated the possible involvement of RAD51 in non-homologous recombination. We demonstrate that overexpression of CgRAD51 enhances the frequency of spontaneous non-homologous recombination in the hprt gene of C...

BACKGROUND In normal cells, RAD51-mediated homologous recombination (HR) is a precise DNA repair mechanism which plays a key role in the maintenance of genomic integrity and stability. However, elevated (dysregulated) RAD51 is implicated in genomic instability and is a potential target for treatment of certain cancers, including Barrett's adenocarcinoma (BAC). In this study, we investigated gen...

The eukaryotic RecA homologue RAD51 plays an essential role in homologous recombination and DNA damage repair in yeast. The lethality of rad51 mutants in vertebrates suggests that this gene has acquired additional functions at the interface of recombination and cell-cycle control in some animals. However, viability and unaltered vegetative development in a RAD51 knockout mutant in Arabidopsis t...

The gene mutated in Bloom's syndrome, BLM, is important in the repair of damaged replication forks, and it has both pro- and anti-recombinogenic roles in homologous recombination (HR). At damaged forks, BLM interacts with RAD51 recombinase, the essential enzyme in HR that catalyzes homology-dependent strand invasion. We have previously shown that defects in BLM modification by the small ubiquit...

In this issue of Molecular Cell, Roy et al. (2021) and Belan demonstrate that the yeast nematode RAD51 paralog complexes function as chaperones to promote assembly nucleoprotein filament on RPA-coated ssDNA.

The homologous recombination pathway is responsible for the repair of DNA double strand breaks. RAD51, a key homologous recombination protein, promotes the search for homology and DNA strand exchange between homologous DNA molecules. RAD51 is overexpressed in a variety of cancer cells. Downregulation of RAD51 by siRNA increases radio- or chemo-sensitivity of cancer cells. We recently developed ...

In contrast to extensive studies on familial breast cancer, it is currently unclear whether defects in DNA double strand break (DSB) repair genes play a role in sporadic breast cancer development and progression. We performed analysis of immunohistochemistry in an independent cohort of 235 were sporadic breast tumours. This analysis suggested that RAD51 expression is increased during breast can...

Rad51 is a key component of homologous recombination (HR) to repair DNA double-strand breaks and it forms Rad51 recombinase filaments of broken single-stranded DNA to promote HR. In addition to its role in DNA repair and cell cycle progression, Rad51 contributes to the reprogramming process during the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells. In light of this, we performed reprogramming exp...

RAD51, the eukaryotic homolog of the bacterial RecA recombinase, plays a central role in homologous recombination (HR) in yeast and animals. Loss of RAD51 function causes lethality in vertebrates but not in other animals or in the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana, suggesting that RAD51 is vital for highly developed organisms but not for others. Here, we found that loss of RAD51 function in ...

B cells are activated for switch recombination by signals from Th cells, but the site at which this first occurs in vivo has yet to be identified. By in situ hybridization of splenic sections using riboprobes specific for the Igamma1 switch transcript and Rad51 mRNA, we have visualized B cells that are newly activated for switch recombination and characterized the spatial and temporal patterns ...