Description
Background: RPA70 (HSSB, REPA1, RF-A, RP-A, p70) is a component of a heterotrimeric complex, composed of 70, 32/30 and 14 kDa subunits, collectively known as RPA. RPA is a single stranded DNA binding protein, whose DNA binding activity is believed to reside entirely in the 70 kDa subunit. The complex is required for almost all aspects of cellular DNA metabolism such as DNA replication (1-3), recombination, cell cycle and DNA damage checkpoints, and all major types of DNA repair including nucleotide excision, base excision, mismatch and double-strand break repairs (4-7). In response to genotoxic stress in eukaryotic cells, RPA has been shown to associate with the Rad9/Rad1/Hus1 (9-1-1) checkpoint complex (8). RPA is hyperphosphorylated upon DNA damage or replication stress by checkpoint kinases including ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM), ATM and Rad3-related (ATR), and DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) (9-11). Hyperphosphorylation may alter RPA-DNA and RPA-protein interactions. In addition to the checkpoint partners, RPA interacts with a wide variety of protein partners, including proteins required for normal replication such as RCF, PCNA and Pol alpha, and also proteins involved in SV40 replication, such as DNA polymerase I and SV40 large T antigen (10,12)