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In budding yeast most Rad51-dependent and -independent recombination depends on Rad52. In contrast, its homologue in fission yeast, Rad22, was assumed to play a less critical role possibly due to functional redundancy with another Rad52-like protein Rti1. We show here that this is not the case. Rad22 like Rad52 plays a central role in recombination being required for both Rhp51-dependent and -independent events. Having established this we proceed to investigate the involvement of the Mus81-Eme1 endonuclease in these pathways. Mus81 plays a relatively minor role in the Rhp51-dependent repair of DNA damage induced by ultraviolet light. In contrast Mus81 has a key role in the Rad22-dependent (Rhp51-independent) repair of damage induced by camptothecin, hydroxyurea and methyl-methanesulfonate. Furthermore, spontaneous intrachromosomal recombination that gives rise to deletion recombinants is impaired in a mus81 mutant. From these data we propose that a Rad22-Mus81-dependent (Rhp51-independent) pathway is an important mechanism for the repair of DNA damage in fission yeast. Consistent with this we show that in vitro Rad22 can promote strand invasion to form a D-loop that can be cleaved by Mus81.

Original publication

DOI

10.1093/nar/gkh853

Type

Journal article

Journal

Nucleic Acids Res

Publication Date

2004

Volume

32

Pages

5570 - 5581

Keywords

DNA Repair, DNA, Fungal, DNA-Binding Proteins, Endonucleases, Models, Genetic, Mutation, Nucleic Acid Conformation, Rad51 Recombinase, Recombination, Genetic, Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid, Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins, Schizosaccharomyces, Schizosaccharomyces pombe Proteins