RecA protein, confusion

[travisjbamford]

I recently did an experiment involving UV irradiation of E. coli with a RecA deficient gene. This mutation 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 researching online found that RecA is also a major factor in SoS response (I'm a second year biology student and my knowledge of this system is limited to what I can grasp from the internet)

My question ultimately is: would a RecA deficient bacterium be unable to repair its DNA following UV exposure, or simply have reduced, but still functional, DNA repair capabilties?

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: clarified a few sentences