RecO impedes RecG-SSB binding to impair the strand annealing recombination pathway inE.coli

AbstractFaithful duplication of genomic DNA relies not only on the fidelity of DNA replication itself, but also on fully functional DNA repair and homologous recombination machinery. We report a molecular mechanism responsible for deciding homologous recombinational repair pathways during replication dictated by binding of RecO and RecG to SSB inE.coli.Using a RecG-yfp fusion protein, we found that RecG-yfp foci appeared only in the ΔrecG, ΔrecO and ΔrecA, ΔrecO double mutants. Surprisingly, foci were not observed in wild-type ΔrecG, or double mutants whererecGand eitherrecFor, separatelyrecRwere deleted. In addition, formation of RecG-yfp foci in the ΔrecO::kanRrequired wildtypessb, asssb-113could not substitute. This suggests that RecG and RecO binding to SSB is competitive. We also found that the UV resistance ofrecO alone mutant increased to certain extent by supplementing RecG. In anssb-113mutant, RecO and RecG worked following a different pattern. Both RecO and RecG were able to participate in repairing UV damages when grown at permissive temperature, while they could also be involved in making DNA double strand breaks when grown at nonpermissive temperature. So, our results suggested that differential binding of RecG and RecO to SSB in a DNA replication fork inEscherichia coli.may be involved in determining whether the SDSA or DSBR pathway of homologous recombinational repair is used.Author summarySingle strand DNA binding proteins (SSB) stabilize DNA holoenzyme and prevent single strand DNA from folding into non-B DNA structures in a DNA replication fork. It has also been revealed that SSB can also act as a platform for some proteins working in DNA repair and recombination to access DNA molecules when DNA replication fork needs to be reestablished. InEscherichia coli, several proteins working primarily in DNA repair and recombination were found to participate in DNA replication fork resumption by physically interacting with SSB, including RecO and RecG etc. However the hierarchy of these proteins interacting with SSB inEscherichia colihas not been well defined. In this study, we demonstrated a differential binding of RecO and RecG to SSB in DNA replication was used to establish a RecO-dependent pathway of replication fork repair by abolishing a RecG-dependent replication fork repair. We also show that, RecG and RecO could randomly participate in DNA replication repair in the absence of a functional SSB, which may be responsible for the generation of DNA double strand breaks in anssb-113 mutant inEscherichia coli.