A multifunctional exonuclease from vegetative Schizosaccharomyces pombe cells exhibiting in vitro strand exchange activity.

A 140-kDa polypeptide (p140) has been purified over 2000-fold from vegetative Schizosaccharomyces pombe cells using an assay of homologous pairing and strand exchange between linear double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) and circular single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) in vitro. Electron microscopic analysis of the reaction products showed displacement of one strand of the linear duplex DNA by the circular ssDNA molecule. In addition, the protein contained 5' to 3' exonuclease activity on ssDNA and dsDNA (with a 50-fold preference on the single-stranded substrate) as well as on single-stranded RNA. Furthermore, p140 was capable of renaturing complementary ssDNA as shown by S1 nuclease assays. p140 behaved like a monomer in solution under reaction conditions. Direct comparison of the biochemical properties, sequence analysis, and cross-reactivity to a monoclonal antibody suggests that p140 is probably identical with ExoII, purified from S. pombe meiotic cells as a ssDNA exonuclease (Szankasi, P., and Smith, G. R. (1992) Biochemistry 31, 6769-6773). Given the diverse activities of p140, the protein might be involved in DNA and/or RNA metabolism in vivo.