Toward Understanding of RecA-promoted DNA Strand Exchange Reaction: Kinetic, Structural and Simulation Analyses

Abstract

RecA protein and its homologs promote strand exchange of long DNA for homologous recombination, and are thus involved in repair and reorganization of DNA. The reaction occurs in a long filament formed by assembly of hundreds of RecA on a long DNA. This makes analysis very difficult. Still we start to understand how RecA recognizes sequence homology, how RecA finds the homologous part so quickly and how RecA exchanges the DNA strands by gathering and developing various approaches including, kinetic, structural, single molecule observation and molecular simulation analyses.