The process in which the nucleoprotein complex (composed of the broken single-strand DNA and the recombinase) searches and identifies a region of homology in intact duplex DNA. The broken single-strand DNA displaces the like strand and forms Watson-Crick base pairs with its complement, forming a duplex in which each strand is from one of the two recombining DNA molecules. [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10357855 GOC:elh ]