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Review Article
Right or left turn? RecA family protein filaments promote homologous recombination through clockwise axial rotation
Article first published online: 14 DEC 2007
DOI: 10.1002/bies.20694
Copyright © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Additional Information
How to Cite
Wang, T.-F., Chen, L.-T. and Wang, A. H.-J. (2008), Right or left turn? RecA family protein filaments promote homologous recombination through clockwise axial rotation. Bioessays, 30: 48–56. doi: 10.1002/bies.20694
Publication History
- Issue published online: 14 DEC 2007
- Article first published online: 14 DEC 2007
Funded by
- This work was supported by an Academia Sinica Investigator Research Award (to TFW), a Frontier research grant from the National Science Council (NSC96-2321-B-001-019 to TFW), and a National Core Facility of High-Throughput Protein Crystallography Grant from the National Science Council (NSC93-3112-B-001-011-Y to AHJW)
- Abstract
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Abstract
The RecA family proteins mediate homologous recombination, a ubiquitous mechanism for repairing DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) and stalled replication forks. Members of this family include bacterial RecA, archaeal RadA and Rad51, and eukaryotic Rad51 and Dmc1. These proteins bind to single-stranded DNA at a DSB site to form a presynaptic nucleoprotein filament, align this presynaptic filament with homologous sequences in another double-stranded DNA segment, promote DNA strand exchange and then dissociate. It was generally accepted that RecA family proteins function throughout their catalytic cycles as right-handed helical filaments with six protomers per helical turn. However, we recently reported that archaeal RadA proteins can also form an extended right-handed filament with three monomers per helical turn and a left-handed protein filament with four monomers per helical turn. Subsequent structural and functional analyses suggest that RecA family protein filaments, similar to the F1-ATPase rotary motor, perform ATP-dependent clockwise axial rotation during their catalytic cycles. This new hypothesis has opened a new avenue for understanding the molecular mechanism of RecA family proteins in homologous recombination. BioEssays 30:48–56, 2008. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.