Rad54 Drives ATP Hydrolysis-Dependent DNA Sequence Alignment during Homologous Recombination.

ABSTRACT: Homologous recombination (HR) helps maintain genome integrity, and HR defects give rise to disease, especially cancer. During HR, damaged DNA must be aligned with an undamaged template through a process referred to as the homology search. Despite decades of study, key aspects of this search remain undefined. Here, we use single-molecule imaging to demonstrate that Rad54, a conserved Snf2-like protein found in all eukaryotes, switches the search from the diffusion-based pathways characteristic of the basal HR machinery to an active process in which DNA sequences are aligned via an ATP-dependent molecular motor-driven mechanism. We further demonstrate that Rad54 disrupts the donor template strands, enabling the search to take place within a migrating DNA bubble-like structure that is bound b

SUBMITTER: Crickard JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7418177 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature