Human BRCA2 protein promotes RAD51 filament formation on RPA-covered single-stranded DNA

  • Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2010 Oct;17(10):1260-2. doi: 10.1038/nsmb.1904.
Jie Liu  1 ,  Tammy Doty ,  Bryan Gibson ,  Wolf-Dietrich Heyer
Affiliations
  • 1. Department of Microbiology, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
PMID: 20729859 DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1904
Abstract

BRCA2 is a tumor suppressor that functions in homologous recombination, a key genomic integrity pathway. BRCA2 interacts with RAD51, the central protein of recombination, which forms filaments on single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) to perform homology search and DNA strand invasion. We report the purification of full-length human BRCA2 and show that it binds to ~6 RAD51 molecules and promotes RAD51 binding to ssDNA coated by replication protein A (RPA), in a manner that is stimulated by DSS1.