repair damaged DNA tagged posts

When something goes wrong during DNA replication, cells call their own version of 911 to pause the process and fix the problem—a failsafe that is critical to maintaining health and staving off disease.

Now, scientists at Van Andel Institute and The Rockefeller University have for the first time revealed how a key piece of this repair process—appropriately called the 911 DNA checkpoint clamp—is recruited to the site of DNA damage. The findings, published today in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, illuminate new insights into the way cells ensure genetic instructions are properly passed from one generation of cells to the next. The project was led by the study’s co-corresponding authors Huilin Li, Ph.D., of VAI, and Michael E. O’Donnell, Ph.D...

A new ‘toolkit’ to repair damaged DNA that can lead to ageing, cancer and Motor Neurone Disease (MND) has been discovered by scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford.

Published in Nature Communications, the research shows that a protein called TEX264, together with other enzymes, is able to recognise and ‘eat’ toxic proteins that can stick to DNA and cause it to become damaged. An accumulation of broken, damaged DNA can cause cellular ageing, cancer and neurological diseases such as MND.

Until now, ways of repairing this sort of DNA damage have been poorly understood, but scientists hope to exploit this novel repair toolkit of proteins to protect us from ageing, cancer and neurological disease.

The fin...