DNA Repair by Reversal of DNA Damage
- Chengqi Yi1,2 and
- Chuan He3
- 1State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
- 2Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Beijing, China
- 3Department of Chemistry and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637
- Correspondence: chengqi.yi{at}pku.edu.cn; chuanhe{at}uchicago.edu
Abstract
Endogenous and exogenous factors constantly challenge cellular DNA, generating cytotoxic and/or mutagenic DNA adducts. As a result, organisms have evolved different mechanisms to defend against the deleterious effects of DNA damage. Among these diverse repair pathways, direct DNA-repair systems provide cells with simple yet efficient solutions to reverse covalent DNA adducts. In this review, we focus on recent advances in the field of direct DNA repair, namely, photolyase-, alkyltransferase-, and dioxygenase-mediated repair processes. We present specific examples to describe new findings of known enzymes and appealing discoveries of new proteins. At the end of this article, we also briefly discuss the influence of direct DNA repair on other fields of biology and its implication on the discovery of new biology.
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