The intimate relationship between DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair and cancer susceptibility has sparked profound interest in how transactions on DNA and chromatin surrounding DNA damage influence genome integrity. Recent evidence implicates a substantial commitment of the cellular DNA damage response machinery to the synthesis, recognition, and hydrolysis of ubiquitin chains at DNA damage ...

SDS is a meiosis specific cyclin-like protein and required for DMC1 mediated double-strand break (DSB) repairing in Arabidopsis. Here, we found its rice homolog, OsSDS, is essential for meiotic DSB formation. The Ossds mutant is normal in vegetative growth but both male and female gametes are inviable. The Ossds meiocytes exhibit severe defects in homologous pairing and synapsis. No γH2AX immun...

Recombinational repair of a site-specific, double-strand DNA break (DSB) results in increased reversion frequency for nearby mutations. Although some models for DSB repair predict that newly synthesized DNA will be inherited equally by both the originally broken chromosome and the chromosome that served as a template, the DNA synthesis errors are almost exclusively found on the chromosome that ...

During the DNA damage response (DDR), ubiquitination plays an important role in the recruitment and regulation of repair proteins. However, little is known about elimination of the ubiquitination signal after repair is completed. Here we show that the ubiquitin-specific protease 5 (USP5), a deubiquitinating enzyme, is involved in the elimination of the ubiquitin signal from damaged sites and is...

DNA damage causes checkpoint activation leading to cell cycle arrest and repair, during which the chromatin structure is disrupted. The mechanisms whereby chromatin structure and cell cycle progression are restored after DNA repair are largely unknown. We show that chromatin reassembly following double-strand break (DSB) repair requires the histone chaperone Asf1 and that absence of Asf1 causes...

Subject codes: [134] Pathophysiology [137]Cell biology/structural biology [96] Mechanism of atherosclerosis/growth factors [162] Smooth muscle proliferation ABSTRACT Rationale: DNA damage and the DNA damage response (DDR) have been identified in human atherosclerosis, including in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). However, although double strand breaks (DSBs) are hypothesized to promote pla...

Plant mitochondrial genomes have very low mutation rates. In contrast, they also rearrange and expand frequently. This is easily understood if DNA repair in genes is accomplished by accurate mechanisms, whereas less accurate mechanisms including nonhomologous end joining or break-induced replication are used in nongenes. An important question is how different mechanisms of repair predominate in...

We have constructed a novel, nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) assay vector (NAV), containing mKate2, Venus and ccdB genes. Cotransfection of NAV with a construct expressing the restriction enzyme I-SceI generated a double-strand break (DSB) in NAV that excised mKate2 and ccdB. Repair of this DSB produced an intact vector that expressed Venus, a green fluorescent protein. Because cells bearing t...

Ino80 and Swr1 are ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling enzymes that have been implicated in DNA repair. Here we show that Ino80 is required for cell cycle checkpoint adaptation in response to a persistent DNA double-strand break (DSB). The failure of cells lacking Ino80 to escape checkpoint arrest correlates with an inability to maintain high levels of histone H2AX phosphorylation and an increas...

A major goal of current cancer research is to understand the functional consequences of mutations in recombinational DNA repair genes. The introduction of artificial recombination substrates into living cells has evolved into a powerful tool to perform functional analysis of DNA double strand break (DSB) repair. Here, we review the principles and practice of current plasmid assays with regard t...