Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on November 14, 2008
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkn895
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Nucleic Acid Enzymes |
Evidence for direct contact between the RPA3 subunit of the human replication protein A and single-stranded DNA
1Laboratoire de Biophysique Moléculaire, Cellulaire et Tissulaire, CNRS-ParisVI-Paris XIII-UMR 7033, 2 place Jussieu, 75251 Paris cedex 05, France and 2Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine, Prospekt Lavrentiev 8, 630090 Novosibirsk, Russia
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +33 1 44 27 40 86; Fax: +33 1 44 27 57 16; Email: saintome{at}ijm.jussieu.fr
Received August 7, 2008. Revised October 20, 2008. Accepted October 26, 2008.
Replication Protein A is a single-stranded (ss) DNA-binding protein that is highly conserved in eukaryotes and plays essential roles in many aspects of nucleic acid metabolism, including replication, recombination, DNA repair and telomere maintenance. It is a heterotrimeric complex consisting of three subunits: RPA1, RPA2 and RPA3. It possesses four DNA-binding domains (DBD), DBD-A, DBD-B and DBD-C in RPA1 and DBD-D in RPA2, and it binds ssDNA via a multistep pathway. Unlike the RPA1 and RPA2 subunits, no ssDNA-RPA3 interaction has as yet been observed although RPA3 contains a structural motif found in the other DBDs. We show here using 4-thiothymine residues as photoaffinity probe that RPA3 interacts directly with ssDNA on the 3'-side on a 31 nt ssDNA.