BRCA1 promotes homologous recombination through separable DNA and RAD51 binding activities within its disordered region.
The breast and ovarian tumor suppressor BRCA1 heterodimerizes with BARD1 to promote DNA double-strand break repair by homologous recombination (HR) and to protect stressed DNA replication forks against nuclease attack. The large, intrinsically disordered central region of BRCA1 harbors binding sites for DNA and multiple repair factors, but its lack of stable structure has hindered mechanistic dissection of these activities. Using biochemical mapping and NMR spectroscopy, we delineate the DNA binding and RAD51 interaction interfaces within this region and construct separation-of-function mutants that selectively ablate each activity. Both DNA binding and RAD51 interaction are required for BRCA1-BARD1 to promote RAD51-mediated DNA strand invasion, and DNA binding also contributes to BLM-DNA2 end resection. These findings provide mechanistic insights into how individual ligand binding activities within BRCA1 contribute to genome maintenance.