We have constructed heteroduplex plasmid DNA that is similar in structure to the heteroduplex DNA expected to be produced during genetic recombination of plasmids, and studied its repair after transformation into different Escherichia coli strains. The heteroduplex DNA was constructed using two different parental plasmids, each of which contained a different ten-nucleotide insertion mutation. The effect of different defined states of dam-methylation on repair was also examined. We found that heteroduplex DNA repair occurred prior to the replication of the substrate DNA 60 to 80% of the time, regardless of the state of DNA methylation. Most excision/synthesis tracts covered two markers separated by 1243 base-pairs, and this process has been termed co-repair. The most efficient co-repair pathway was the Dam-instructed repair pathway that required the mutH, mutL, mutS and uvrD gene products and preferentially used the methylated strand as the template for DNA synthesis. If there was no methylation asymmetry, mismatch nucleotide repair occurred with a similar frequency; however, no strand bias was observed. Co-repair of symmetrically methylated heteroduplex DNA required the mutS and uvrD gene products, while repair of unmethylated heteroduplex DNA also required the mutL and mutH gene products.