RecA-dependent incision of psoralen-crosslinked DNA by (A)BC excinuclease

Previous work to elucidate the mechanism of crosslink repair by (A)BC excinuclease has shown that a psoralen-crosslinked duplex is selectively incised in the furan-side strand, while a three-stranded structure is incised in the pyrone-side strand of the crosslink. These observations support a sequential incision and recombination model for the complete error-free repair of a psoralen crosslink. The work presented here extends these findings by demonstrating that in the presence of RecA protein and a homologous DNA oligonucleotide, (A)BC excinuclease is induced to incise the pyrone-side strand of a crosslinked double-stranded plasmid molecule. This finding adds further support to the current model for error-free crosslink repair.