  Rainbow connection number rc(G) of a connected graph G is the minimum number
of colours needed to colour the edges of G, so that every pair of vertices is
connected by at least one path in which no two edges are coloured the same. In
this paper we show that for every connected graph G, with minimum degree at
least 2, the rainbow connection number is upper bounded by {\gamma}_c(G) + 2,
where {\gamma}_c(G) is the connected domination number of G. Bounds of the form
diameter(G) \leq rc(G) \leq diameter(G) + c, 1 \leq c \leq 4, for many special
graph classes follow as easy corollaries from this result. This includes
interval graphs, AT-free graphs, circular arc graphs, threshold graphs, and
chain graphs all with minimum degree at least 2 and connected. We also show
that every bridge-less chordal graph G has rc(G) \leq 3.radius(G). In most of
these cases, we also demonstrate the tightness of the bounds. An extension of
this idea to two-step dominating sets is used to show that for every connected
graph on n vertices with minimum degree {\delta}, the rainbow connection number
is upper bounded by 3n/({\delta} + 1) + 3. This solves an open problem of
Schiermeyer (2009), improving the previously best known bound of 20n/{\delta}
by Krivelevich and Yuster (2010). Moreover, this bound is seen to be tight up
to additive factors by a construction of Caro et al. (2008).
