Abstract
Correction to: The EMBO Journal (2002) 21, 3160–3170. doi:10.1093/emboj/cdf293
In the above paper, the authors reported the identification and characterization of six rad51 alleles that suppress the ionizing radiation sensitivity of rad55 and rad57 mutants. Each of these alleles was reported to contain a single nucleotide change responsible for the suppression phenotype.
In recent work to further characterize one of these alleles, rad51-L119P, they discovered a second mutation at position 983 changing valine 328 to alanine. The V328A substitution alone is responsible for the suppression phenotype. Thus, all of the suppressing mutations map to a 32-residue region of Rad51 that is proposed to be involved in DNA binding.
This error does not alter the major conclusion of the paper, that Rad51 mutant proteins with increased affinity for DNA can partially bypass the requirement for Rad55 and Rad57 in DNA repair. Because the six rad51 alleles recovered change only four residues, it seems likely that the screen is close to saturating and the suppression of rad55 and rad57 can only be achieved by alterations in this region of Rad51.
The authors apologize for this error and hope that it has not misled other researchers in the field.