Ligand Bridging of the DNA Holliday Junction: Molecular Recognition of a Stacked-X Four-Way Junction by a Small Molecule

摘要

Homologous recombination (HR) in the repair of a collapsed replication fork is a process that involves strand invasion, branch migration, and resolution of the resulting Holliday junction (HJ). The HJ is a four-way DNA junction, and the crystal structure of the stacked-X conformation was first reported in 1999. Since then, the sequence dependence of spontaneous junction formation has been carefully studied- by crystallography and, most recently, the formation of a tetrameric species in solution by the d(CCGGTACCGG) decamer sequence has been confirmed.