We engineered a tagged version of the yeast Rad51 recombinase and used this tool to monitor DNA double-strand break repair in living cells. We could observe how a broken DNA fragment can scout the nucleus to identify a similar sequence and use it as a template for repair.
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References
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Miné-Hattab, J. et al. Single molecule microscopy reveals key physical features of repair foci in living cells. eLife 10, e60577 (2021). This paper reports in vivo single-molecule tracking of the Rad51 loader Rad52, and supports the existence of a liquid droplet forming around DSBs.
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This is a summary of: Liu, S. et al. In vivo tracking of functionally tagged Rad51 unveils a robust strategy of homology search. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-023-01065-w (2023).
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Visualizing the repair of broken DNA in living cells reveals a new mechanism for DNA homology search. Nat Struct Mol Biol 30, 1409–1410 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-023-01068-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-023-01068-7
