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. 2024 Apr;36(4):e23664.
doi: 10.1002/chir.23664.

Linear dichroism reveals the perpendicular orientation of DNA bases in the RecA and Rad51 recombinase filaments: A possible mechanism for the strand exchange reaction

Masayuki Takahashi  1 , Kentaro Ito  2 , Hiroshi Iwasaki  1   3 , Bengt Norden  4
Affiliations

Linear dichroism reveals the perpendicular orientation of DNA bases in the RecA and Rad51 recombinase filaments: A possible mechanism for the strand exchange reaction

Masayuki Takahashi et al. Chirality. 2024 Apr.

Abstract

Linear dichroism spectroscopy is used to investigate the structure of RecA family recombinase filaments (RecA and Rad51 proteins) with DNA for clarifying the molecular mechanism of DNA strand exchange promoted by these proteins and its activation. The measurements show that the recombinases promote the perpendicular base orientation of single-stranded DNA only in the presence of activators, indicating the importance of base orientation in the reaction. We summarize the results and discuss the role of DNA base orientation.

Keywords: DNA strand exchange; Rad51; RecA; Swi5‐Sfr1 protein; homologous recombination; linear dichroism (LD).

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References

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