I recently did an experiment involving UV irradiation of E. coli with a RecA deficient gene. This was to avoid plasmid recombination (the experiment involved transformation, selective growth media, that sort of thing, but is irrelevant to my question) but a little searching online found that it is also a major factor in SoS response (this is the first time I’ve heard of this system, so my knowledge of it is very limited).

My question ultimately is: would a RecA deficient bacterium be unable to repair its DNA, or have reduced DNA repair?

As a side note; I haven’t found much evidence that there is significant damage to other parts of the cell (membrane, proteins etc.) from uv exposure, most articles I’ve seen focus on DNA damage. Would it be correct to assume that most apoptosis is a result of DNA damage?

edit: This is relative to a second year university biology course