title: 25 years on and no end in sight: a perspective on the role of RecG protein.
abstract: The RecG protein of Escherichia coli is a double-stranded DNA translocase that unwinds a variety of branched substrates in vitro. Although initially associated with homologous recombination and DNA repair, studies of cells lacking RecG over the past 25 years have led to the suggestion that the protein might be multi-functional and associated with a number of additional cellular processes, including initiation of origin-independent DNA replication, the rescue of stalled or damaged replication forks, replication restart, stationary phase or stress-induced 'adaptive' mutations and most recently, naïve adaptation in CRISPR-Cas immunity. Here we discuss the possibility that many of the phenotypes of recG mutant cells that have led to this conclusion may stem from a single defect, namely the failure to prevent re-replication of the chromosome. We also present data indicating that this failure does indeed contribute substantially to the much-reduced recovery of recombinants in conjugational crosses with strains lacking both RecG and the RuvABC Holliday junction resolvase.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Genetics and Genomics, University of Nottingham, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, NG7 2UH, UK.
authors.forename: Robert G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Lloyd
authors.affiliation: Division of Biosciences, College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK. christian.rudolph@brunel.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Christian J
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2493-3748
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Rudolph
mesh_terms: D002876:Chromosomes, Bacterial; D004249:DNA Damage; D004265:DNA Helicases / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism*; D004261:DNA Replication; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism*; D005838:Genotype; D059765:Homologous Recombination; D009154:Mutation
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins; C071446:RecG protein, E coli; D004265:DNA Helicases
keywords: Homologous recombination; Replication fork collisions; Replication termination; SDR; Stable DNA replication; Stalled replication forks