RAD51, RAD52, and RAD54 encode proteins that are critical to the repair of double-strand DNA breaks by homologous recombination. The physical interactions among the products of RAD51, BRCA1, and BRCA2 have suggested that the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer susceptibility genes may function, at least in part, in this DNA damage repair pathway. Given the observation that different genes within a co...

T is considerable interest among protein scientists in methods that permit unnatural amino acids to be incorporated at specific sites in proteins. Such methods would facilitate studies of protein structure and function and would allow for the synthesis of proteins having novel properties. Current methods use nonsense-suppressing tRNAs (1) to incorporate an unnatural amino acid at the desired si...