Fig. 6: Rad52’s DNA annealing activity drives template switching between diverged Alu elements.

a Schematic showing the AluSx1-AluSp recombination reporter inserted 12.4 kb downstream of RTS1 on chromosome 3. The upper part of the panel shows a map of the chromosome 3 region where RTS1 and the AluSx1-AluSp recombination reporter are inserted. Replication origins are indicated by brown circles. Black and red arrows indicate the direction of canonical replication and RDR, respectively. The lower part of the panel shows the AluSx1-AluSp recombination reporter. Primers A and B are used to amplify the AluSx1-AluSp region for analysis of recombinant products. b Frequency of spontaneous (RTS1-IO) and RTS1-AO-induced Ura⁻ His⁻ recombinants in wild-type and rad52-R45A mutant strains with ori-1253∆ and the AluSx1-AluSp recombination reporter shown in (a). Data are presented as median values ± interquartile range with individual data points shown as grey dots. n indicates the number of colonies tested for each strain. Each data point represents the frequency of Ura⁻ His⁻ recombinants in one of the tested colonies. The data are also reported in Supplementary Table 2, which includes the strain numbers and p values. Further details of the statistical analysis are reported in Supplementary Data 1. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. c Sequence analysis of AluSx1-AluSp template switches. The sequence of AluSx1 is shown with homologous sequences used for template switching in red. The coloured lines above indicate the number of events observed among the subset of colonies tested for each strain.