The Role of RecFOR proteins in homologous recombination

Sato, Katsuya; Kikuchi, Masahiro; Ishaque, A. M.*; Oba, Hirofumi*; Yamada, Mitsugu; Tejima, Kohei; Onodera, Takefumi; Narumi, Issei

In an effort to gain insights into the role of RecFOR proteins in homologous recombination, we generated , and disruptant strains and characterized the disruption effects. Disruption of resulted in severe reduction of the transformation efficiency. On the other hand, the disruptant strain was the most sensitive phenotype to rays, UV irradiation and mitomycin C among the three disruptants. In the disruptant strain, the intracellular level of the LexA1 protein did not decrease following irradiation. These results demonstrate that the RecF protein plays a crucial role in the homologous recombination repair process by facilitating RecA activation. Thus, the RecF and RecR proteins are involved in the RecA activation and the stability of incoming DNA, respectively, during RecA-mediated homologous recombination processes that initiated the ESDSA pathway in .