UvrABC endonuclease

Researchers Discover New Model for "Global" DNA Repair

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 30, 2022

NEW YORK, March 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Two studies provide a radically new picture of how bacterial cells continually repair damaged sections (lesions) in their DNA.

Key Points: 
  • Given that damaged DNA can result in detrimental DNA code changes (mutations) and death, cells evolved to have DNA repair machineries.
  • Widely accepted work, including studies that led to a 2015 Noble Prize , had argued that TCR played a relatively small role in repair because it relied on a putative TCR factor that made only a marginal contribution to DNA repair.
  • A parallel process, global genome repair (GGR), was assumed to scan and fix most of DNA independent of transcription.
  • Both processes were thought to set the stage for nucleotide excision repair (NER), in which a damaged stretch of DNA was snipped out and replaced by an accurate copy.