BACKGROUND Recent clinical studies have linked polymorphisms in the xeroderma pigmentosum group D (XPD) gene, a key repair gene involved in nucleotide excision repair, to increased risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the cellular effects of XPD expression in cultured HCC cells remain largely uncharacterized. Therefore, the aim of this study was to characterize the in vitro cellular...

This study aimed to investigate the associations of XPC c.2815A>C, XPD c.934G>A and c.2251A>C, XPF c.2505T>C and ERCC1 c.354C>T single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of nucleotide excision repair pathway in outcome of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients treated with cisplatin (CDDP) chemoradiation. Patients with XPC c.2815AC or CC and XPD c.934GA or AA genotypes had 0.20 and...

The XPD (xeroderma pigmentosum complementation group D) helicase family comprises a number of superfamily 2 DNA helicases with members found in all three domains of life. The founding member, the XPD helicase, is conserved in archaea and eukaryotes, whereas the closest homologue in bacteria is the DinG (damage-inducible G) helicase. Three XPD paralogues, FancJ (Fanconi's anaemia complementation...

Mms19 encodes a cytosolic iron-sulfur assembly component. We found that Drosophila Mms19 is also essential for mitotic divisions and for the proliferation of diploid cells. Reduced Mms19 activity causes severe mitotic defects in spindle dynamics and chromosome segregation, and loss of zygotic Mms19 prevents the formation of imaginal discs. The lacking mitotic tissue of Mms19 larvae can be rescu...

The eukaryotic XPD helicase is an essential subunit of TFIIH involved in both transcription and nucleotide excision repair (NER). Mutations in human XPD are associated with several inherited diseases such as xeroderma pigmentosum, Cockayne syndrome, and trichothiodystrophy. We performed a comparative analysis of XPD from Homo sapiens and Chaetomium thermophilum (a closely related thermostable f...

In mammals the bulky DNA adduct lesions known to result in deleterious phenotypes are acted upon and removed from the genomic DNA by nucleotide excision repair (NER) pathway. TFIIH multi-protein complex with its important helicase-Xeroderma Pigmentosum Protein (XPD) serves as the pivotal factor for opening up of the damaged lesion DNA site and carry out the repair process. The initial damage ve...

G4 motifs are greatly enriched near promoters, suggesting that quadruplex structures may be targets of transcriptional regulation. Here we show, by ChIP-Seq analysis of human cells, that 40% of the binding sites of the transcription-associated helicases, XPB and XPD, overlap with G4 motifs. The highly significant overlap of XPB and XPD binding sites with G4 motifs cannot be explained by GC rich...

Mitosis is a fundamental process for chromosome segregation in all multicellular organisms. Misregulation of mitosis can cause genetic instability and cancer. Thus, identification of the genes involved in the regulation of mitosis is important for understanding the mechanism of chromosome segregation and genome instability. Unbiased genetic screens are powerful tools for identifying new gene fu...

Lung cancer, a disease related mostly to tobacco smoke exposure and a leading cause of cancer-related death in industrialized countries, is frequently associated with mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor gene. Genetic differences resulting in inter-individual variation in DNA repair capacity may in part account for susceptibility of a cell to genotoxic agents leading to somatic mutations, incl...

Genetic polymorphisms of xeroderma pigmentosum group D (XPD) in the nucleotide excision repair pathway may influence cancer susceptibility by affecting the capacity for DNA repair. Studies investigating the association between XPD Lys751Gln and Asp312Asn polymorphisms and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) risk reported inconsistent results. The aim of this study was to quantitatively summarize the...