The yeast Dbf4-dependent kinase (DDK) (composed of Dbf4 and Cdc7 subunits) is an essential, conserved Ser/Thr protein kinase that regulates multiple processes in the cell, including DNA replication, recombination and induced mutagenesis. Only DDK substrates important for replication and recombination have been identified. Consequently, the mechanism by which DDK regulates mutagenesis is unknown. The yeast mcm5-bob1 mutation that bypasses DDK's essential role in DNA replication was used here to examine whether loss of DDK affects spontaneous as well as induced mutagenesis. Using the sensitive lys2DA746 frameshift reversion assay, we show DDK is required to generate "complex" spontaneous mutations, which are a hallmark of the Polz translesion synthesis DNA polymerase. DDK co-immunoprecipitated with the Rev7 regulatory, but not with the Rev3 polymerase subunit of Polz. Conversely, Rev7 bound mainly to the Cdc7 kinase subunit and not to Dbf4. The Rev7 subunit of Polz may be regulated by DDK phosphorylation as immunoprecipitates of yeast Cdc7 and also recombinant Xenopus DDK phosphorylated GST-Rev7 in vitro. In addition to promoting Polzdependent mutagenesis, DDK was also important for generating Polz-independent large deletions that revert the lys2DA746 allele. The decrease in large deletions observed in the absence of DDK likely results from an increase in the rate of replication fork restart after an encounter with spontaneous DNA damage. Finally, nonepistatic, additive/synergistic UV sensitivity was observed in cdc7D pol32D and cdc7D pol30-K127R,K164R double mutants, suggesting that DDK may regulate Rev7 protein during postreplication "gap filling" rather than during "polymerase switching" by ubiquitinated and sumoylated modified Pol30 (PCNA) and Pol32. K NOWLEDGE of how mutations are produced is important for understanding genetic variability in populations and the process of evolution. Cells have evolved sophisticated molecular mechanisms for maintaining the integrity of the genome. Most DNA repair mechanisms have high fidelity and prevent mutations by removing damaged DNA and replacing the resulting gap using the undamaged, complementary strand as a template (Waters et al. 2009;Boiteux and Jinks-Robertson 2013). If not repaired, some lesions block the replicative DNA polymerases (Pols a, d, and e) during S phase and require bypass by an alternative errorfree or error-prone mechanism. Error-free bypass usually involves a template switch to the undamaged sister chromatid, while error-prone bypass uses translesion synthesis (TLS) DNA polymerases to synthesize new DNA directly across the lesion. There are at least 15 identified TLS polymerases in human cells but only three in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Polz, Polh, and Rev1, which are encoded by the REV3-REV7, RAD30, and REV1 genes, respectively (Boiteux and Jinks-Robertson 2013). TLS polymerases have low fidelity and processivity on undamaged DNA templates and lack an associated exonuclease proofreading activity.The misregulation or loss of TLS p...